- Carolina Digital Repository

MASCULINE TEXTUALITIES: GENDER AND NEOLIBERALISM IN
CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN FICTION
Vinodh Venkatesh
A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Department of Romance Languages (Spanish).
Chapel Hill
2011
Approved by:
Oswaldo Estrada, Ph.D.
María DeGuzmán, Ph.D.
Irene Gómez-Castellano, Ph.D.
Juan Carlos González-Espitia, Ph.D.
Alfredo J. Sosa-Velasco, Ph.D.
© 2011
Vinodh Venkatesh
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
ABSTRACT
VINODH VENKATESH: Masculine Textualities: Gender and Neoliberalism in
Contemporary Latin American Fiction
(Under the direction of Oswaldo Estrada)
A casual look at contemporary Latin American fiction, and its accompanying body of
criticism, evidences several themes and fields that are unifying in their need to unearth a
continental phenomenology of identity. These processes, in turn, hinge on several points of
construction or identification, with the most notable being gender in its plural expressions.
Throughout the 20th century issues of race, class, and language have come to be discussed, as
authors and critics have demonstrated a consciousness of the past and its impact on the
present and the future, yet it is clear that gender holds a particularly poignant position in this
debate of identity, reflective of its autonomy from the age of conquest.
The following pages problematize the writing of the male body and the social
constructs of gender in the face of globalization and neoliberal policies in contemporary
Latin American fiction. Working from theoretical platforms established by Raewyn
Connell, Ilan Stavans, and others, my analysis embarks on a reading of masculinities in
narrative texts that mingle questions of nation, identity and the gendered body. The
first chapter examines nationalism and the writing of masculinity in the context of the
new historical novel, keeping in mind economic paradigms of laissez-faire, marketing,
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privatization, and the deterritorialization of economic markets. In the second chapter I
examine the narrative usage of the cultural artifacts of popular music and song, both as
a textuality of Latin American identity and as a political affront to the forces of
neoliberal cultural imperialism. Chapter three recontextualizes masculinities in
contemporary Latin American fiction through a study of the diegetic usage and
characterization of space in Mexico City. I trace a practice of representation through
novels from the 1970s to the early 2000s, focusing on the contemporary works of Ana
Clavel. Taking into account current approaches to the study of masculinities, I conclude
with an analytic presentation of new culturally-indigenous literary tropes that dialogue
with globalized representations of power and gender.
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To my parents…
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are so many people to thank at this moment, at the end of what can be called a
career of learning, though we all know that such a label is false, as to myself and those
mentioned below, learning seems to be a never-ending source of delight and at times
frustration. First and foremost I want to thank my family for always supporting me and my
decisions. To my parents who always trusted in me and who never wavered in their
appreciation of everything I do. To my siblings for being the two most amazing people I
know, and for always caring and being there.
I want to thank the members of my committee for being incredibly supportive and
available throughout this process. This dissertation would not be possible without the careful
readings and comments by María DeGuzmán, Irene Gómez-Castellano, Juan Carlos
González-Espitia, and Alfredo J. Sosa-Velasco. In addition to being excellent scholars to
work with, I can sincerely call them my friends who always were willing to go beyond the
professional call of duty.
I want to thank Oswaldo Estrada for being more than a dissertation director. From the
first coffee we shared at Foster‟s Market in Chapel Hill, he has been more than an adviser. I
have learnt so much, both as a scholar and person, from his sayings, songs, writings, and
advice. Few people are as jovial, forthright, and knowledgeable as him, and it is safe to say
that I would not be writing these words if not for his constant support. Working on the
dissertation has been a pleasure given our frequent meetings and discussions, his suggestions
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and references, and the close editing and reading that helped me polish these pages. From
being a professor to adviser to friend, I write my heartfelt thanks to Oswaldo.
These pages would not be complete without mention of Shifra Armon, Gillian Lord,
Pablo Gil Casado, José Manuel Polo de Bernabé, and Alicia Rivero for being excellent
mentors and teachers. I am forever thankful for them instilling in me a passion for language
and literature.
To Montse, Alfonso, Giada, Maria and Stephanie, I thank you for the bursts of
laughter and cups of coffee that got me through the MA. To Katie, Jon, Rosario, Holly,
Michael, Inma, Sam, Hamilton and Suzie, I thank you for being an amazing set of friends.
Potlucks, dinners, and afternoons basking in the sun with burgers and beers are the memories
that I will forever cherish. Last but not least, I want to thank Mari Carmen for always being
there for me and making my life easier. I also thank her for being my accomplice and partner
in crime…
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
I.
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1
II.
MARKET(ING) MASCULINITIES / MATERIALIZING BODIES
IN LATIN AMERICA‟S NEW HISTORICAL NOVEL………………………..45
Commoditizing Resources: The Male Body in Margarita, está linda la mar…...49
Trafficking in Masculinities in Nadie me verá llorar……………………………59
Undercover Marketing: Politics and Masculinities in La fiesta del Chivo………73
Bodies that Matter: Queer(ing) Masculinities and the Fall of the Dictator…...…82
Materialized Bodies / Marketable Bodies………………………………………..95
III.
LYRICAL TEXTUALITIES: MUSIC AND MUSICALITY IN THE
(DE)CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITIES……………………………...…99
Defining the Literary OST: Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero………….…104
Towards a Lyrical Epistemology of Masculine Desire…………………………115
Soundtrack, Seduction, and Homosocial Dynamics
in El huerto de mi amada.....................................................................................132
Between Rock and a Hard Place: Gender in Franz Galich‟s Managua……...…147
Lyrical Desires and an Aesthetics of Resistance/Confrontation………….……167
IV.
FROM THE SPATIAL TO THE VIRTUAL: GENDERIZED AND
GENDERIZING SPACES IN THE METROPOLIS……………………...……170
Writing/Mapping the Subaltern Space: Los deseos y su sombra……………….180
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Plotting Masculinity and Conceiving the Virtual in Cuerpo náufrago…………204
The Failure of Space and the Destabilization of Masculinities……………...…228
V.
HARD DRIVES, CYBORGS AND VIAGRA:
NEW CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF MASCULINITIES AND THE
BODY……………………………………………………………………....…..232
Natural, Comic, and Existential Masculinity in Barrio Alto……………….…..237
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, or Cyborg Masculinity in Tokyo…………………254
Transnational Viagraphies in Enrique Serna‟s La sangre erguida…………..…271
Writing the Male Body and Questioning Masculinity………………………….286
VI.
CONCLUSION: OF TROPES AND MEN………………………………...…..288
VII.
WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………..300
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A casual look at contemporary Latin American fiction, and its accompanying body of
criticism, evidences several themes and fields that are unifying in their need to unearth a
continental phenomenology of identity. These processes, in turn, hinge on several points of
construction or identification, with the most notable being gender in its plural expressions.
Throughout the 20th century issues of race, class, and language have come to be discussed, as
authors and critics have demonstrated a consciousness of the past and its impact on the
present and the future, yet it is clear that gender holds a particularly poignant position in this
debate of identity, reflective of its autonomy from the age of conquest.1 I am not arguing that
gender in Latin America is mutually exclusive of the events circa 1492 and afterwards, a look
at the countless tales of La Malinche or La Perricholi prove otherwise, but that gender in
contemporary society exists as an ontological expression that can be discussed, delineated
and performed a priori to a paradigm of hybridity, conquest, and mestizaje.
The construct of gender in Latin America, however, is not so much rooted in North
American academic debates of performativity or essentialism, but is instead reliant on
privileges and powers that leave women and non-heteronormative gender identities to the
side, as subservient bodies that are trafficable and disposable. It is not surprising, then, that a
1
I use Judith Butler‟s Gender Trouble (1990), Bodies that Matter (1993), and Undoing Gender (2004) for my
base definitions of the concept. I also refer to Michel Foucault‟s ideas on sexuality and the coding/encoding of
the term in The History of Sexuality (1977).
populist critical vein of inquiry has risen, focusing on these othered bodies in Latin American
societies and fiction. Subsequently, and as I will explain in further detail, a recent interest has
surged in the studies of masculinity, that ambiguous term or gender that has been pegged as
responsible for the subjugation of millions.
Part of this surge coincides with what has been called a crisis in masculinity, a global
phenomenon that has been particularly noted in Latin America due to the traditional
expressions of machismo or machista masculinity that enshrines maleness.2 By crisis, we are
referring to a change of order or roles, as women are increasingly allowed and encouraged to
work and lead lives that were only privileges enjoyed by men. Economic autonomy, sexual
liberation, and the right to an education are some of the changes that have impacted gender
politics in Latin America. These changes, in turn, are products brought about by the opening
of local markets to foreign economies and economic policies, as free-trade and foreign direct
investment becomes a norm in Latin American countries in the latter half of the 20th century.
The policies of open trade and liberalized economies has been labeled by critics as
neoliberalism, or a contemporary motif of liberal economic thought that opens borders and
markets, and reduces the role of government in previously nationalized industries. These
measures, as can be expected, democratize societies and unregulated the power held by men
in local societies.
The connection I draw between gender and neoliberalism is built upon the crisis that
the latter causes in the concept of masculinity, triggering the critical interest in the strategies
2
I use the term Latin America to describe the geographical and political grouping of Spanish-speaking nation
states to the south of the United States. My study does not take into account Lusophone narratives or the
literatures of other language groups such as English or Dutch. Though I mention the impact of neoliberalism in
Latin America, I also am conscious of alternate political systems that annul the agents of free markets such as
communist Cuba that understandably has not been influenced by the social changes brought about by neoliberal
tendencies.
2
of change and coping that men undertake as a result, a motif that is evidenced in fiction
produced in the second half of the century. The connection between neoliberalism and
masculinity, however, also elucidates a paradox, as the economic policy seemingly supports
fluid and multiple expressions of gender. While this may be true for the increasing openness
of non-heteronormative genders, the converse is produced in the representation of
masculinity. The neoliberal market asserts a new position of hegemony over local gender
expressions, perpetuation what critics calls transnational business masculinity, and
destabilizing what was already in crisis due to the social changes brought about by economic
liberalization.
The novelistic ruminations on the crisis and its aftereffects forms the corpus of my
study, as I examine fiction produced since 1990, focusing on how and why masculinity is
treated as a reference within a discourse of identity. I identify this starting point as the years
immediately afterwards coincide with the liberalizations of economies and the political
changes brought about by revolutions and tensions between Leftist and Rightists groups. The
subsequent crises in governments, combined with a crisis of gender engineered by neoliberal
tendencies, posits the genesis of the texts I study in these pages. Their treatment of
masculinity, I argue, is fundamental to an understanding of gender and self.
When we take a look at some recent postulates on masculinity, for example, it is clear
that some theorists adopt a women‟s vantage point; others focus on Queer views, or more
specifically, transsexual and/or transgender experiences. Instead of focusing on what
masculinity is, how it comes into play, and to what extent it shows variation (just as
feminism is not a universal), critics have tended to follow an alternate route. Simply put,
3
when dealing with masculinity, critics tend to construct the male gender category in relation
to an Other.3
This is (partly) the reason I am interested in researching the affairs, representations,
and discourses of masculinity. From an initial inquiry into the field, it is clear that criticism
relies heavily on a single critic and text, just as gender studies tends to ubiquitously sprinkle
Butler in its pages. In her canonical tome, Masculinities, Raewyn Connell, formerly known
as Robert Connell, presents a systematic sociological theory of gender. Writing in a nascent
field without any true theoretical pillars, Connell appropriates Antonio Gramsci‟s ideas of
hegemony, asserting that gender is, in addition to being a socially and culturally constructed
historical process and subject position, a process of hegemonic domination by one group over
another. Importantly, masculinity is not a proscriptive identification based on anatomical
structures. Instead, masculinity is a place where the subject is positioned in within the
contexts of power. We observe here the poststructuralist roots of her argument, as he takes as
a functional paradigm Foucault‟s ideas on power and history. Connell expands the bounds of
masculinity beyond simple role theory, and locates men within broader systems of power
(Ashe 145). There are no ontological accounts of men, or an essential core. Similarly, Judith
Halberstam in her book Female Masculinity (1998) affirms that masculinity is not inherently
male; going so far as to suggest a separate gender category of “female masculinity” in a poly3
I am using the terms “Queer” and “Other” in regards to subject positions that are diametrically opposed to
heteronormative gender conceptions. “Queer” is capitalized as an umbrella term for all non-heterosexual gender
orientations and gender positions. I use the term “Other” to refer as well to any subject position that is not
defined as heterosexual masculinity. It can be used, however, to describe other heterosexual gender positions
such as that occupied by heterosexual women. Ontologically, being an “Other” is intrinsic in being “Queer,”
whereas the opposite does not hold true. Both terms, however, provide an epistemological base for
understanding gender. Furthermore, I am hesitant in my analysis to use the word Queer or Queering (with
capitals or in lower-case) as the term has become an identity and not an action. To queer is to decenter, to
question, to challenge the binaries of heteronormative power, but in recent years the verb has become
synonymous with a North American idea of non-heterosexual. Therefore a queer subject is not a subject who
questions heteronormativity, but is instead automatically taken to be homo/trans/bisexual, showcasing the
affinity to use labels and to establish an identity of sexuality, which I argue is not always the case in Latin
America.
4
valenced examination of both high and low culture. Maleness is not to be equated with
masculinity and vice versa, Halberstam argues. I tend to agree but suggest that the latter,
however, always dialogues with masculinities to establish a subject position, particularly in
literature where the body and its appendages are structural tools of characterization.
Before going any further into these pages, a brief discussion on what masculinity is
warranted, as many a critical volume of late leaves the idea of masculinity lingering over its
arguments and diatribes, without necessarily providing a definition. Though a brief look
through some of these arguments would lead the reader to conjecture that the masculine is
the not-feminine, I want to turn this posture on its head. The feminine(s), the Queer(s), and
the masculine(s) are all created, put into play, and allowed to perpetuate by the Masculine (to
be used interchangeably with Connell‟s notion of hegemonic masculinity, but that comes
later). Borrowing from Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, the Masculine “designs itself from the
outside of culture and society, and doubles an idea of itself as the very interior of that culture
and society” (108). Those characteristics deemed powerful, desirable (both to the projected
and real heterosexual, and repressed homosocial imagination vis-à-vis desire) and viable as
the pillars of the social matrix are enshrined as the Masculine, intrinsically linked to the male
body. The penis, by association, Ilan Stavan‟s Latin Phallus, becomes more than a
reproductive tool but is representative of a greater psychological (and physical) process of
control that potentiates power.
I want to suggest that the Masculine is deified and assimilated through aesthetic,
discursive, behavioral, and (even) sartorial cues and practices and is enabled by all gendered
bodies within a given culture and society. The reverse process, I want to make clear, is what
creates the other non-Masculine gender expressions, as whatever that does not lie within or
5
rigidly follow this specific epistemology of power is relegated to alternative and subservient
roles and positions. This includes the creation of masculinities, those male (though at times
female) approximations to the Masculine that in some shape or form fall short of embodying
the socially/culturally enabled construct. Aside from being performative, iterative, and
sociocultural in constitution, gender is a tableau vivant defined and brushed over by the
previously and simultaneously enabled position of the Masculine.
Within this framework of masculinities (and femininities and Queerities, for that
matter) the body is engaged in a dialectic process of identification where gender is not
attributed to or defined simply by performance. I want to suggest that gender is a verdant
association between the physical body and those social traits outlined earlier that sustain the
image of the Masculine (as it is nothing more than a projected ideal, a méconnaissance that
depending on level of adherence to or disassociation from establishes a gender expression),
and that we cannot completely do away with the anatomy of the subject when talking about
gender, no matter how en vogue the words performance, performativity, and drag have
become.4 Halberstam‟s female masculinity is only an approximation of the Masculine, as its
gendered subjects can never fully publicly attain a position of power without an anatomic
appendage that hangs loosely between their legs. Female masculinity, like others that I define
and study in these pages, attains a position of masculinity in its desire to approximate, and
the level to which it succeeds in this approximation of the Masculine.
The corporal escapism that Butler and others have pushed ahead is useful when
talking and recreating gender, but falls short of establishing a system of gender that revolves
4
Though I disagree with Sifuentes-Jáuregui‟s Queer studies take on some of the novels he analyzes (most
notably the coital scene between La Japonesa Grande and La Manuela in Donoso‟s El lugar sin límites), I do
agree with his affirmation that “that there is a critical difference about the place of the body in Latin American
cultures vis-a-vis the place of the body in contemporary gender theory in the United States” (7).
6
around specific axes or loci that keep the semiotic game alive. It is here that the biggest
benefit in studying masculinities lies, as by understanding the construction and definition of
the Masculine, and by carefully reading its approximations can we begin a holistic attempt to
understand the role and system of gender within a specific sociocultural and historical
moment.
In literary studies, a theory of gender can be observed when we come across Jung‟s
collective consciousness, as we are forced to encounter the polemics of genderizing semantic
fields. According to Jung, the gender binary is existent not only in the psyche of the
individual, as in the poles of the anima and the animus, but also within society as a whole.
The former system, according to Jung, represents the two inherent qualities that the
individual possesses in the mind. Centering, maternal, and soft drives are governed by the
anima; whereas violent, demanding, and active drives are manifestations of the animus. In
the collective consciousness, the Swiss theorist identifies archetypes that are inherently
feminine and masculine. It is important to note that he places these archetypes at the
extremes of a spectrum, with human beings occupying an in-between space. Such bipolar
gendered figures are particularly evident in Latin American foundational fictions where
gender is intrinsically connected to sex. Problems arise, however, when we encounter
fictional subjects who are inherently ambiguous, both physically and performatively. The
narrative voices in Luis Zapata‟s La hermana secreta de Angélica María (1989) exemplify
this problem or issue, as what the reader believes to be a silicone burlesque dancer, is
actually a homicidal hermaphrodite. Staying with a Jungian philosophy, then, how can we
talk about gender in Zapata‟s novel?
7
The issue of gender is paramount in the study of Latin American literatures of the
latter part of the 20th century until today. The issue of identity is ubiquitous in both texts and
literary movements. Groupings such as the post-Boom novel, McOndo, the New Narratives,
and the New Historical Novel all polemicize the importance of identity both at the individual
and nation-state levels. Gender, as evidenced not only by the popularity of psychoanalysis
and feminism in literary circles, is a central characteristic of identity. Adding to the debate,
Diana Fuss notes that identity has a “colonial history” and that this history “poses serious
challenges to contemporary recuperations of a politics of identification” (141). The existence
of a colonial history between Europe and Latin America accentuates the importance of
identity.
Using identity, however, as a foundation for politics involves some form of reiteration
of that identity and its power-effects (Ashe 91). If gender is used to define both personal and
national identity – as it has been in Latin America – there must be an after-effect or result. If
gender is binary (as some conceive it), then to simply study it discursively from the
perspective of feminism or Queer studies is not enough to understand the construct of
identity. As Fuss comments, “the signifier „Other,‟” whether it be the homosexual male or
the woman, “in its applications, if not always its theorizations, tends to disguise how there
may be other Others – subjects who do not quite fit into the rigid boundary definitions of
(dis)similitude, or who indeed might be left out of the Self/Other binary altogether” (144). It
is this disconnect that I am interested in, as I argue that the position of power, inherently
Masculine in most social contexts, is not all-encompassing of male gendered bodies. What I
am trying to say is that the position of masculinity does not always apply to male gendered
bodies, and when it does, it tends to diffuse in gradients. Connell‟s structural model proves
8
useful here, as the position of hegemony is often never fully occupied, thereby pushing those
subordinate and complicit masculinities outside the circumference of power into a
disadvantaged position.
I am not arguing that men occupy an analogous position to women in Latin American
society; a perusal of a daily newspaper holds the opposite to be true as women are still the
victims of domestic violence, workforce discrimination, and sexism. What I am putting
forward is the idea that the masculine experience is not simple and uniform, and that men too
must face the consequences and judgment imposed by the unrealistic gendered position of
the Masculine. That being said, for a fruitful step forward in the study of identity in
contemporary Latin America, masculinities within greater discourses of gender and power in
Hispanic literatures must be critiqued.
Although substantial research has been undertaken in the field by critics such as
Rebecca Biron, Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba, David William Foster, and Robert McKee
Irwin, among others, there is still much to do. These critics use masculinity as an
organizational point in identity politics without really taking into account the multiplicity of
the position that I stress earlier. Though some critics such as Steven Marsh do analyze and
focus their studies on men, the majority, as I have referenced above, focus on the Other. In
the critical work done on Cristina Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar (1999), for example,
there has been a focus on the female body as a transgressive entity. If the topic of masculinity
has been addressed, it has been done superficially; the various male gendered bodies in the
text, which is to say the men, are left aside by most scholars. Rivera Garza‟s turn of the
century doctors, lawyers, photographers and drug addicts provide literary fodder in the
portrayal of the nation and a reexamination of identity vis-à-vis nationality. I build on this
9
analysis in the first chapter as I focus on current rewritings of the past and the implications of
the male body within the imaginary of a nation. That being said, masculinities and masculine
bodies must become a focus of study if we are to not only understand the literary production
of Hispanic writers but to also understand power structures and modalities inherent and
extant in Latin American societies. It is through this methodology that I aim to add to the
growing critical corpus pioneered by Biron, Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Sifuentes-Jáuregui and
Mckee Irwin amongst others.
Part of this process involves a careful hermeneutic cultivation of traditionally
considered macho subjects as bodies that occupy the binary position of Other. By
systematically distinguishing the drug addict or the revolutionary from the standards of
masculinity that dictate specific sociocultural power structures, we can unearth a rich
substrate of characters, identities, and gendered positions that are just as reactive to the
hegemonic as say feminine and Queer expressions. This, I underline, is central to my
approximation of masculinities. An illustrative example to this approach can be seen in my
analysis of Franz Galich‟s Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera) (2006), where the
macho heterosexual men are queered not only by the betraying butterfly from the Maná song,
but also by their increased use of homophobic slurs and labels. Their recourse to a colonizing
language (of the hegemonic over subordinate masculinities) coincides with their new interest
in the supple buttocks of a transvestite prostitute and the fact that they, and not the women in
the novel, increasingly become traitors, reflecting the title song of the soundtrack. It is
important to note that a recognition of masculinities does not in any shape or form degrade a
Queer perspective to the text, as these men of complicit masculinities (Connell 79) mutate
with the aid of music as an intertext into being potentially Queered subjects. They evidence a
10
struggle to gain subjectivity, just as and perhaps a reflection of the problems of sovereignty
and progress in a post-war Central America left identity-less by years of turmoil and North
American imperialism.
This struggle with gaining subjectivity within the politics of the Other has been
explored by Judith Butler in Undoing Gender (2004). Butler studies how “restrictively
normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life” might be undone (1). My textual study of
masculinity in Latin American narrative by implication involves an identification of the
normative conceptions of sexuality and an exploration of how these conceptions can be
undone. I will look at how contemporary authors use the brothel space, the archetypal
coordinates where young men engage in the coital process of hacerse hombre, but focus on
how the politics of the brothel are rewritten within a system of undoing traditional gender
norms, with the latent possibility of (in some cases) a reconstruction of gender.
This analytics of gender, or a study of its implications within a literary treaty of
subjectivity and identity vis-à-vis space and the nation has been attempted in several critical
works from the first decade of the 21st century. A useful tome is Héctor Domínguez
Ruvalcaba‟s Modernity and the Nation in Mexican Representations of Masculinity (2007),
which adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the study of gender in Mexico. The title of the
book presents it as an exploration of masculinity and the homosocial mass before, during,
and after the Mexican Revolution. In reading the critic‟s work, however, it is clear that the
author‟s punto de partida is the dichotomy extant in masculinity studies, with heterosexual,
or heteronormative masculinity on one end of the binary, and everything else negated,
abhorred, and persecuted by it, on the other. This latter group becomes the core of his
analysis, as a book that specifies the term “masculinity” in its title, deals very little with the
11
implications and representations of masculinities in Mexican texts, and instead focuses on
how Queer representations are formed and survived by hegemonic masculinity. This exercise
in itself is fundamental in building an understanding of Latin American masculinity, as it
emphasizes the position of control held by the Masculine throughout the 20th century.
In another critical study dedicated to national identity vis-à-vis masculinity, Robert
McKee Irwin diachronically examines Mexican texts from the 19th and 20th century to
develop a theory of masculinity and its heteronormative constructs that confronts Octavio
Paz‟s traditional take on Latin American sexuality. Citing Paz, Irwin argues that it is not the
object of desire that is important in sexuality (as is the case in North American identity
politics), but is instead the aim of sexual relations (xxiv). Irwin‟s argumentation is
constructed in opposition to the observation that sociologists have taken these words to be
gospel as they claim that sexual acts such as fellatio and reciprocal penetration in male
homoerotics are foreign imports. Focusing on how the construct of hegemonic masculinity
changes from the non-eroticized homosocial of the “hombre de bien” (47) of the 19th century
to more transgressive relationships in the 20th century, Mckee Irwin develops a theory of
Queer masculinity that challenges Paz‟s ideas. My issue with Mexican Masculinities (2003),
however, is that it orients its analysis along North American identity constructs of desire ab
initio, thereby skewing its textual analysis of novels towards a Queer studies perspective.
That being said, however, the analysis carried out by the author is fundamental to a field of
masculinity studies within Latin American studies, as it sets up an evolution of the gender
expression within Mexico, thereby providing a useful methodological tool.
The problematic of using North American ideas of gender when considering texts
from south of the border is the critical practice of sustaining a language that may or may not
12
be productive when dealing with the Spanish-speaking world. A good illustration of this
critical quandary lies in Mayra Santos-Febres‟s Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000), where
the young protagonist goes from being a drug addicted street urchin to an alluring bolero
singer. Under the aesthetic and theatrical guidance of a transgendered madam, Selena adopts
the persona of a sensual transvestite who seduces all those who listen to him. What at first
glance seems to be a novel about transgendered and transvestite identities is overhauled by
the author as we realize that the labels of transgendered, transvestite, heterosexual and
homosexual are not so easily applicable to the characters of the novel. Though some critics
have been quick to point out that Selena is a woman trapped in a man‟s body, it is clear from
a close reading of the novel that his identity is not as black and white. It becomes clear,
particularly through the analogous development of Leocadio, that Santos-Febres‟s “coming
out” novel is only truly a reflection of the economic plight of a society devastated by end-ofthe-century economic policy that has enslaved the islands to the imperial West. An
understanding of the economic paradigm of the novel is fundamental in reading gender, just
as it is the case with Galich‟s mariposas.
It is obvious, then, that the epistemological challenges within these critical texts lie in
their projection of theories of gender onto a sociocultural matrix that did not experience
Stonewall or the advent of gender-identity social movements. Studying masculinity through
the optic of Queer studies is to leave aside the specific circumstances of a society, or in more
general terms, to superimpose the identity politics of one culture onto another, without
necessarily problematizing gender and sexuality within that context. Though I posit this from
a critical standpoint, novelists such as Santos-Febres and Luis Zapata have posed similar
concerns in their novels. The latter‟s canonical El vampiro de la colonia Roma (1979)
13
questions categories of gay and straight through the picaresque adventures of Adonis García
in the streets of Mexico. Though the novel has been heralded as Latin America‟s first gay
novel, it is naïve to assume that it conforms to Queer ideas of identity, which are normative
in their imposition of an intrinsically non-heteronormative stance. Without delving into a
coming-out narrative that stresses some sort of innate homosexual identification, Zapata‟s
novel successfully problematizes local and foreign sexualities, questioning what is
masculine, feminine, and Queer. The problem, I argue, lies in the reception of the text, as
critics attribute it a political role that is invoked a priori.
I am not arguing that a Queer studies perspective to masculinity is erroneous or
methodologically unsound, as there are strong readings and postulates extant in the critical
works cited previously. What I am pointing out, however, is the non-focus on masculinity as
a construct that this approach warrants, as the topic at hand deviates substantially from the
intrinsic plurality of the term. A similar, albeit ideologically different position is invoked in
Rebecca Biron‟s Murder and Masculinity: Violent Fictions of Twentieth Century Latin
America (2000), as she examines masculinity in the detective novel of the continent, not
confining herself to country, period, or movements. Like Domínguez Ruvalcaba‟s tome,
Biron‟s text rarely talks about masculinities. The methodology behind her analysis positions
masculinity as a hegemonic, phallocentric entity that dialogues with women, who are in
effect the primary concern of her text. Biron‟s point of departure is the binomial conception
of masculinity as being a pole with a necessary opposite or Other; with masculinity and the
Other mutually defining each other. It is clear that Biron like Domínguez-Ruvalcaba views
gender as a phenomenological construct, though she side-steps the ontological questions of
masculinity that are left undiscussed. As an example, we can glean from the text how the
14
novels included in the study “explore the actual erasure of women and its implications for
prevailing images of masculinity” (7). According to Biron, masculinity is about violence,
about the repression of the Other, whether it be Queer or female, and the imposition of a
heteronormative discourse in the national literary space. The usefulness of this study is again
fundamental to an understanding of the role of the Masculine within Latin America, as the
violence imparted by men is an everyday occurrence.
Reading Connell, Biron notes that though few men meet the normative definitions of
masculinity in a given cultural and historical context, “they may nonetheless partake of the
power associated with hegemonic masculinity” (8). Biron, however, does not delve further
into Connell‟s structuralizations of masculinity into further categories, and instead focuses
solely on the violence exerted by men in Latin America who are “in crisis” and who use
violence to “simultaneously celebrat[e] and undermin[e] hegemonic masculinity” (8). What I
would like to highlight is that these men occupy a paradoxical position, as both perpetrators
and victims.
Taking this observation in hand, I would add to Biron‟s excellent analysis a study of
how violence operates within circles of men, and how the oppressors against women are
equally oppressive against subordinate male bodies. Societal violence stemming from and
against groups of men, rigidly held in position by hegemonic masculinity, is evidenced in
Franz Galich‟s Managua salsa city (¡Devórame otra vez!) (2000), where violence is both a
fundamental narrative and linguistic device. The city of Managua as depicted in the novel
adheres to Biron‟s idea of a Latin America whose “contemporary violence points to crisis
tendencies” (8), where Galich, by means of a tightly spun narrative focusing on a prostitute
and her band of conmen, weaves a tale of urban violence and corruption in a city that lays
15
bare at night the open wounds of a bloody civil war.5 Linguistically, the text is violent in its
abrupt changes of narrative voice from the first to the third person and vice versa. The
prevalence of colloquialisms, idiolects, and non-standard syntax in the text signals a violent
shift from a normative narrative. The violence against women that Biron theorizes exists on a
fantasized level in the novel. The one-time street but now club-going prostitute, Tamara, tells
her potential John, Pancho, that she was sexually abused as a child. When asked how many
people raped her, she explains that she was gang-raped. Pancho does not believe her, as she
later corrects herself by saying her cousin assaulted her and that her parents did not ever
discover the rape.6
This verbal intercourse plays itself out over a greater game of seduction between the
two, as they dance, eat, and converse with the topic of sex-for-money never openly discussed
in the third person narrative, though it is explicated in the first person shifts. Physical
violence in the text, however, is only exerted between men. Just as Biron notices an allegory
between the men and the nation in the texts she studies, Galich evokes a similar motif in the
characters he builds in Salsa city. Pancho is an ex-soldier who works as a houseboy of an
affluent family vacationing in the United States. Tamara sided with the Sandinistas. Pancho
drives a modern Toyota whereas the group of conmen who pursue him around the city drive
an antiquated Russian (communist) Lada (15). The Calle Ocho duo, another group of men
who get caught up in the con game run by Tamara, are Americanized, speak Spanglish, and
do not fit the local model of the “latin lover” (60). One of them is both rat-faced and an
5
This is the same city that Gioconda Belli writes about in La mujer habitada (1988), though in Galich‟s novel,
we see the physical remnants and psychological shrapnel of the conflict within the urban space.
6
A similar gang-rape with an equally incredulous male character occurs in Mario Vargas Llosa‟s Travesuras de
la niña mala (2006). The fabrication of violence against women by female characters is intrinsically connected
to the positioning and creation of masculinities as the men who listen to the trumped-up charges of rape and
sodomy must decide to take a position within or against the misogynistic practices of the violent perpetrator
who often embodies a hegemonic position of power vis-à-vis the female.
16
opportunist as he attempts to seize Tamara for himself. Even amongst Tamara‟s ragamuffin
band of thieves, there are individual characters who subscribe to macro-level subject
positions. Mandrake is an ex-soldier who fought against the Contras. Hodgson is a drugdealer of African heritage, who plays the role of the hyper-sexualized black man, or what
Connell calls marginalized masculinity.
With so many male characters populating a microcosm of the nation within Galich‟s
diegesis, the issue of violence cements the struggles between men. In fact, Tamara is treated
as sacred and always protected, even at the cost of male lives in the final showdown in
Pancho‟s place of work. Contrary to Biron‟s claim that masculinity is an assertion of
violence against women (who represent the Other) to promulgate a new national space within
times of crisis, Galich shows how violence and masculinity need not always be formulated
with an analytical focus placed on the Other. Violence can and is exerted by and against men,
who negotiate and define the various incarnations of masculinity within their historical and
political context. A clear example of this occurs in Vargas Llosa‟s La fiesta del Chivo (2000)
where an impotent and incontinent dictator unleashes physical and emotional violence onto a
community of men who live in a constant state of fear. In this particular case, the Peruvian
writer (re)writes a historical account of the last days of Rafael Trujillo‟s dictatorship and
examines the symbols and practices of regime-based masculinity.
Though Biron includes women in her study of masculinity, she does so from the
axiom that women are objects within the binary. Parting from ideas first put forth by Gayle
Rubin, she notes that women are victims of violence, or currency in a larger economy of
men. The weak-links within Biron‟s work are explored by Judith Halberstam, in Female
Masculinity, where she evaluates masculinity in relation to women, but as opposed to Biron,
17
she does so by positioning women as the subject. Halberstam argues that women can and do
perform masculinity and as such are active entities within the power modalities constructed
and perpetuated by societal norms of patriarchy. She further proposes that female masculinity
is its own gender, which breaks from Connell‟s sociological hierarchization of men into
varying masculinities. In saying this, my study of masculinities will include Halberstam‟s
theorizations as the concept of masculinity is a subject position and not necessarily dictated
by physical sexual anatomy, although bodies do matter, as Judith Butler has pointed out.
Women can and do become the subject within the axis of masculinity, turning on its
head the binary conception of gender prevalent in critical studies to date. In the hermeneutic
work done on Gioconda Belli‟s La mujer habitada, for example, studies have focused on the
“nueva mujer” as a model of feminist movements in Latin America. Others have also
commented on the ecofeminist aspects of Belli‟s work, uniting discourses of gender and
ecology under the oppressive presence and actions of men.7 In the case of Belli‟s novel, I
propose that it can be contextualized within Nicaraguan society by an analysis of how the
protagonist Lavinia performs masculinity not only within political and guerrilla movements,
but also within the landscape of the cityspace. The implications of a “nueva mujer” and on
her role in the civil war can be juxtaposed with the women and men portrayed in Galich‟s
novels, which depict a Managua in the 21st century. Masculinity shapes and operates in the
discursive space of the city and society, with both men and women occupying positions of
subjectivity. A similar example of female masculinity can be noted in Cristina Rivera
Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar (1999). Here, masculinity is primordial to not only the
understanding of society during and after a civil war, as in Nicaragua, but also in regards to
7
I will further discuss the theories behind ecofeminism, and will provide a counterpoint to the idea in what I
observe as “ecomasculinity” in texts such as Hernán Rodríguez Matte‟s Barrio alto (2004).
18
the project of modernity. The city is paramount to this task, as undesired elements of society
are segregated to a psychiatric institution at the periphery of Mexico City. Rivera Garza‟s
principal female character Matilda Burgos negotiates gender norms and transgressions, as
well as societal constructs and institutions of hegemonic masculinity, such as the police and
the medical conscription of prostitutes.
The playful approximation to gender in Rivera Garza, Ana Clavel, and others makes
me stop to consider the critical binary vis-à-vis masculinity that is seen in Biron and others
who tend to depart from the axiom that masculinity does not exist as a mutually exclusive
discursive element, but is instead always written, dialogued and commensurate with the
gender-Other, whether this be a Queer or feminine identity. This ambiguity returns us to my
initial inquiry: what about the study of masculinities? What are the implications of these
masculinities on male gendered bodies? Here, of course, I mean “men” without a colon to
follow, for I refer to the characters that appear in texts as principal, or sometimes absent,
subjects. They are automatically ignored or assigned to the hegemony, though they
themselves actively engage just as Queer and female characters do with this controlling
brand of masculinity. I speak of male gendered bodies, or “men,” to highlight their presence
as representatives of distinct masculinities occupying subject positions in a larger societal
matrix held together by power.
A theoretical framework to this quandary is, however, a possibility, given recent
writings on the idea of masculinity studies as an academic field. Fidelma Ashe, in her book
The New Politics of Masculinity: Men, Power and Resistance, distinguishes between two
stark veins of masculinity studies: that which is anti-feminist, and that which is pro-feminist.
The former group is against dialoguing with women and promotes traditional gender
19
dichotomies and gender roles. Ashe identifies anti-feminists as “generally orientated towards
stalling or overturning the effects of feminism on contemporary cultures” (3). Men are seen
to have lost the “sex war” against the perceived onslaught of feminist and pro-women
rhetoric and politics. In opposition, pro-feminism has attempted to build on the gains and
changes of second wave feminism. There is an interest for not only liberating women but also
liberating men from traditional gender roles. In response to the problematic posed by
asserting an Other to men in discussions of masculinity, pro-feminists have employed
feminist and Queer discourses to develop forms of reflexivity around and not opposed to the
categories of men. Pro-feminist discourse, within masculinity studies, takes identity as a
“problematic construct, rather than a natural taken-for-granted reality” (Messner 97). Profeminism, both as a theoretical framework and a political discourse, is poststructuralist in its
conception of power and identity (Hearn, Connell). By decentering gender from the
individual, in terms of anatomical composition, to larger macro-levels of power, and microlevels of behavior, pro-feminism provides a toolbox for the exploration of masculinities.8
John Stoltenberg, a significant figure in pro-feminist politics, declared that men do
not exist as an ontological entity (xiv). There is no essentialism to the idea of masculinity or
men. Ashe identifies his theories as a “radical constructionist framework” (96). Importantly,
though, he is not a non-normative thinker, as he advocates for a moral framework to guide
the reconstruction of subjects defined as men. Stoltenberg, however, is also a universalist.
His ideas do not reflect the experiential imparity of the Mexican mayate and the American
8
It is important to note that not all pro-feminist ideas are poststructuralist. Mythopoetic groups within the
movement, for example, subscribe to characterizations of an „essence‟ of masculinity, quite similar to Jung‟s
terming of the male archetype.
20
jock.9 Jeff Hearn goes beyond Stoltenberg, focusing on the epistemological issues of profeminist thought within masculinity studies. Echoing other poststructuralist views on gender,
he asserts that men are a socially constituted, multiple and variable social group. He also
argues that men are collectively representative of a gender class, though they are not per se
reflective of an ontological category.10 Men‟s power, Hearn contends, is supported through
economic, political, institutional, and discursive structures.
In addition to placing masculinity within a larger matrix of power and interests, Ashe
cites Hearn as she critically examines masculinity studies and suggests that it is currently
flawed in that “men are referred to explicitly but not necessarily problematized, and little, if
any, exploration of „men‟ is provided” (128). A similar concern erupts from Latin American
critics who have studied masculinity from the fields of anthropology and sociology. The
effects of machismo on society have been discussed by Mara Viveros and Norma Fuller,
though both agree that little has been done in the social sciences to examine the impact of
unrealistic male expectations on groups of men who live under patriarchy. The most pertinent
study to date comes from the FLACSO conference on masculinity held in Santiago in 1998.
The proceedings, edited by Teresa Valdés and José Olavarría, continually return to Connell‟s
ideas vis-à-vis the structuralization of masculinity. Scholars such as Isabel Hernández and
Gonzalo Pérez take as an axiom Connell‟s language and hierarchies, thereby legitimizing the
use of a non-specific model to the very specific context of Latin American sexuality.
9
Domínguez Ruvalcaba studies the phenomenon of mayate culture in Mexico. They are men who routinely
engage in man-on-man coitus, but always performing the penetrative role, in opposition to the joto who is
always the receiver. This paradigm of sexual practices, and its effect on subject gender identification is similar
to Roger Lancaster‟s observations of the cochón in Nicaragua.
10
The idea of a gender class emerges with second wave feminism. Ashe indicates that the usefulness of the term
has been contested (125). Hearn, however, uses the term to “capture the effects of the historical and ongoing
politically constituted relationships of power between men and women.”
21
In effect, Connell‟s idea of plural masculinity is reinforced by critics such as Oscar
Misael Hernández who observes that “los estudiosos/as de los hombres en América Latina
han propuesto superar la noción de masculinidad y suplirla por masculinidades, reconociendo
la diversidad de experiencias e identidades de los hombres y los riesgos de una perspectiva
esencialista que encierre a todos los hombres en una sola identidad” (70). A similar tone is
adopted by José Olavarría when he writes that “los estudios sobre identidades masculinas
heterosexuales han buscado hacer visible el referente dominante, hegemónico en términos de
Connell” (4), calling to attention once more the structuralist paradigm of gender.
What I am trying to get at here is the international acceptance of Connell‟s language
of talking about masculinity, as his terminology and ideas are perpetuated by critics that
originate from and study Latin American masculinity and its intricacies. By saying that I
stress that my study is not an extrapolation or a projection of ideas from the North towards
the South, but is instead conscious of and sensitive to local tendencies in gender expression
and its representation. In effect, the analysis and postulates I labor on in the following pages
take into account the writings of the main players in the Latin American academy dealing
with masculinity studies, namely Mara Viveros, José Toro-Alfonso and José Olavarría and
their writings on masculine identity. These thinkers argue that a discursive approximation to
the study of masculinities in Latin America is needed to better understand the pluralities of
identity that come with being associated to the masculine. With that being said, I keep in
mind Ilan Stavans‟s idea of the Latin Phallus when discussing the cultural implications of
hegemonic masculinity, as the critic provides a fruitful way of reading masculinity within
Latin America. He argues that both men and women “seemingly revolve around the phallus,
an object of intense adoration, the symbol of absolute power and satisfaction” (51). Reading
22
between the lines of his work, however, elucidates a critical need to go beyond the phallus in
Latin American discourses of masculinity, as the adoration of the phallus and the subsequent
sociological product of machismo are the “greatest contradiction in Hispanic male sexuality”
(51).
My study, in contrast to other critical works I have cited above, intends to take up
Hearn and these critics on their challenge to examine, problematize and explore men in the
narratives of Latin America. As an example, I will study the role of men and masculinities
vis-à-vis violence in Galich‟s Managua salsa city (¡Devórame otra vez!) and Vargas Llosa‟s
La fiesta del Chivo, thereby diverting from Biron‟s assertion that masculinity specified by
violence, exists primarily in opposition to women. I further look at the importance of male
desire, sexuality and impotence in La sangre erguida (2010) by Enrique Serna, playing close
attention to how the penis is dethroned and examining the ramifications of publicly outing
the impotent male in a social context hampered by omnipotent and virile masculine norms.
In my analysis I stress the pertinence of Connell‟s model of understanding gender, not
as a universal testament to its role within identity, but as a strong system of identification that
lends subjectivity to the body and the nation. Before going further, however, a few terms
must be brought up and discussed.
The idea of masculinity, particularly its hegemonic variant, is often used
interchangeably with the idea of patriarchy. Feminists and anti-feminists have viewed
patriarchy as a male-dictated, phallocentric, and hegemonic set of institutions, discourses,
and structures. Poststructuralists, however, differ from the above, citing patriarchy to be
particular and not universal (Ashe, Connell, Hearn, Foucault). Male power is in no terms
inherent in social systems, but is instead “historical, shifting and dependent on specific
23
social, cultural, and geographical environments” (Ashe 140). Power, importantly, does not
have a simple logic or direction, but is instead an intersection of the modalities of different
power planes. I, therefore, understand patriarchy to be a system of power dictating the social
matrix under which gendered bodies are collocated, connected by micro and macro tangents
of power relations restricted by a particular avatar of hegemonic masculinity.
Keeping this notion of power in mind, Connell from a sociological standpoint
identifies masculinity as an ontoformative phenomenon: it defines, structures, and concretes
gender identity. The critic differentiates between hegemonic masculinity and other
masculinities, identifying, how feminism has done before, that there are pluralities to an
umbrella-term such as gender identity. Hegemonic masculinity is defined as “the
configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the
problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the
dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (77). The masculinity of the
upper Anglo-Saxon class in the United States is necessarily different from the masculinity of
middle class men in Managua, Nicaragua, as Roger Lancaster studies it. For the former
group, any form of homoerotic expression, not always including male-on-male penetration
identifies both parties as homosexual. To the Nicaraguan man, however, the only
homosexual is the effeminate man being penetrated – he is a cochón, deriving from the
Spanish for mattress. The activo in this relationship gains esteem, expressing his virility and
machismo by penetrating others, whether they are women or men.
In contemporary North American popular media, the slightest hint of homoerotic
desire is qualified by the phrase “no homo” in both music and in oral discourse. Jonah
Weiner in an article in The New York Times dealing with homosexuality in the hip hop
24
community, cites multi-award winning artist Kanye West who while pushing for acceptance
of homosexuality, raps in a 2009 song: “It‟s crazy how you can go from being Joe Blow, to
everybody on your dick, no homo.” Perhaps the most illustrative example of masculinity in
contemporary American pop culture comes from an artist who has not only performed in
traditional hip hop circles but who has also successfully crossed-over to other mediums such
as film. In a Blender magazine interview, the artist Method Man confirms, “you can‟t be
fuckin‟ people in the ass and calling yourself gangsta” (Weiner). The Nicaraguan men
studied by Lancaster, however, beg to differ. For them, as for other men in countries such as
Mexico and Cuba, it is perfectly normal to sodomize the Other and still parade and perform
the role of the macho varón.11 Interestingly, the men in Lancaster‟s study do not engage in
oral sex with each other. Oral activities such as kissing are further not practiced amongst men
engaged in homoerotics in Nicaragua. Their interactions of carnal commerce are solely anal.
How would these men, along with the listeners of Method Man who cringe at the thought of
giving each other a hug, react to being fellated by the transvestite “loca del barrio” as we see
in Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero?
The different geographic and national contexts are to note, as I am not attempting a
reading of gender and sexuality in the social field.12 I am examining the representations and
reconciliations of gender and identity in the literary, which is not altogether divorced from
social constructs and phenomena. Galich‟s characters in Y te diré quien eres (Mariposa
traicionera) are aware of cochón culture. This is evidenced in the transvestite prostitute
11
I defer to Judith Butler‟s assertions on gender, performativity and iteration in Gender Trouble (1990) and
Undoing Gender (2004).
12
As understood by Bourdieau. He notes that “[a] field is a separate social universe having its own laws of
functioning independent of those of politics and the economy” (162).
25
Xaquira (named after the Colombian singer) when she beats a married client, exclaiming that
only now will society see who the “real” cochón is. Similarly, the men in the novel such as
Pancho Rana and El Brujo hire other transvestite prostitutes during their alcohol-induced
celebrations, fully aware that by doing so they escape being homosexuals in the social.
It is not fortuitous that these men are aware of the hegemonic structuralizations of
masculinity in Nicaraguan society. The term “hegemonic masculinity,” however, has also
been problematized as being too general. Wetherell and Edley have contested the term
“hegemonic” as they observe that nobody can fully embody it (Ashe 155). They suggest that
is has multiple meanings and that scholars should focus on how “men negotiate, produce and
reproduce identities by taking up multiple meanings of masculinities in particular contexts”
(Ashe 155). They not only suggest that it has multiple meanings, but that also scholars should
focus on how men negotiate, produce and reproduce identities by taking up the multiple
meanings of masculinities in particular contexts. They, like Hearn, argue that it is important
to “trace the discursive strategies men employ to position themselves as part of a constituted
category of men and the implications of these self-positionings rather than commencing the
analysis of men by defining masculinity as prior to its constitutions” (Ashe 155, my
emphasis).
From a structural standpoint, their criticism holds water, as hegemonic masculinity is
variable. On the other hand, we must remember that hegemonic masculinity is a subject
position and not a subject quality. It is only hegemonic in relation to others. It is however, as
they argue, not a tangible position. Hegemonic masculinity therefore might be simply a
hypothesized position and not actually embodied by one singular group or individual. It is,
however, for all intents and purposes, the figure that Stavans (through the possession of the
26
Latin phallus) and others contend structures Latin American erotics. In my study, I will
analyze this polemic, evaluating both sides of the argument, and seeing if in the texts, which
is to say in the “discursive strategies,” there is an answer that will provide a much needed
addition to not only Hispanic literatures but also to masculinity studies. In examining Rivera
Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar, for example, I will show how the author creates a character
within the subject position of hegemony in constant opposition to what George Mosse terms
the “countertype” (6). In La fiesta del Chivo, I will examine the structure of the New
Historical Novel and how it uses history and paratextual sources to create a subject position
that is not necessarily embodied by any singular character within the diegesis.
When talking about men, I am not interested in how hegemonic masculinity dialogues
with the Other, especially since the critical volumes cited above have already done so. I am
instead interested in how hegemonic masculinity dialogues with other masculinities. My
study is focused on men, though in constructing and dialoguing with hegemonic masculinity,
queer and female gender identities cannot be ignored, just as male gender identities cannot be
ignored when countering queer positions with hegemonic masculinity. I will address these
other gender positions without devolving into a theory of Queer or feminist identity in
literature as to date, for critical studies in these fields are both thorough and beyond the scope
of this investigation. My project, however, will incorporate ideas and theories from these
fields with the aim of theorizing a more holistic study of gender.
To be clear, I will be focusing on what Connell denominates as subordinate, complicit
and marginalized masculinities (79-81). Note that all deal within masculinity and are in fact
testimony to what has been examined to date on the plurality of the gender construct.
Subordinate masculinity in relation to hegemonic masculinity can be viewed as the Hegelian
27
slave to the master. Citing Gramsci, Connell asserts that hegemony inculcates “specific
gender relations of dominance and subordination between groups of men” (78). In modern
Western society, the most visible case of this relationship is seen in the dominance of
heterosexual men and the subordination of homosexual or Queer men. As Connell notes,
“this is much more than a cultural stigmatization of homosexuality or gay identity” in that
“gay men are subordinated to straight men by an array of quite material practices” (Connell
78). The treatment of transvestites in El lugar sin límites can attest to this, in addition to the
various laws passed against homosexuals and homosexual practices amongst men in Chile
during the 19th and 20th centuries, to name a few examples. Even within cultures in which
homoerotic actions are permitted, such as Nicaragua, there is still a hierarchy of dominant
and subordinate masculinity. The active penetrator is deemed dominant, whereas the cochón
is viewed as subordinate. Interestingly enough, he is not as subordinate as the cochón who
only sleeps with and is involved in relationships with other pasivos.
On a similar note, complicit masculinity takes as a point of departure that fact that
normative definitions of masculinity face problems of adherence. Most men do not meet the
normative standard of hegemonic masculinity, for example. Though the majority of men do
not belong to hegemonic masculinity, they do in part gain from the hegemony as it
subordinates women. Connell theorizes that complicit masculinities are “constructed in ways
that realize the patriarchal dividend, without the tensions or risks of being the frontline of
troops of patriarchy” (79). Connell further notes, in her sociological study, that by sheer
numbers, complicit masculinity is the most pervasive category she observes in Western
culture. Complicit masculinities furthermore “often involve extensive compromises with
women rather than naked domination or an uncontested display of authority” (79). Men in
28
this group are complicit with the hegemonic project. In the reading of several novels, I have
noticed how male characters at times clamor for the approval of other men in regards to their
female partner or their profession. One character, for example, avidly shows a picture of his
fiancé to another man, questioning yet declaring at the same time: isn‟t she beautiful? The
other character sees the fiancé as less than pretty and in fact rather frail – a “shell” of what a
woman “should” be, he notes (Nadie me verá llorar 53). Is this a case of subordinate
masculinity in the engaged man? The answer is not that simple, as on the one hand he is not
downtrodden by the homosocial mass. From another angle, neither is he a member of the
hegemony, because a hegemonic member would be self-aware and self-assertive in his role
amongst men. He, is after all, complicit with the hegemony, as to him, the group‟s valuation
of his fiancé is paramount to his being with her. He subscribes to the hegemony‟s
subordination of women to a commoditized currency. This thesis, however, is clearer a
posteriori as from a textual standpoint, Rivera Garza struggles with an in-progress work of
identity positioning. The author reflects a similar process in her later novels and short-story
collections; putting emphasis on the importance of discursive strategies as a series of snapshots of an in-progress negotiation of identity.
The final categorization of masculinities according to Connell is that of the
marginalized variety. He cites the example of the black athlete in the United States, who is
viewed as an exemplar of hegemonic masculinity, yet at the same time black men are treated
as subordinates on a generalized level. The relationship between the marginalized and the
hegemonic is dictated by the “authorization of the hegemonic masculinity of the dominant
group” (80). The example of Oscar Wilde also proves interesting, as the homosexual Briton
was allowed to be homosexual, until his legal battle with a rich aristocrat, the Marquess of
29
Queensberry. Marginalized masculinities are particularly poignant in heterogenic cultures
such as those in Latin America. In Peru, for example, where there is a divide between the
European upper class and the indigenous peoples, the existence of cholo masculinities is an
interesting element of analysis. If they were to dialogue with Connell‟s categories, would
they be marginalized, or simply subordinate? In Nicaragua, Mexico, and Cuba, how do
revolutionary fighters interact with and subscribe to an institutional power structure
characterized by masculinity that they themselves are attempting to behead? Can they
reconcile their Oedipical mission statement while being masculine yet ideally asexualized?
(¿Entiendes? 170). In Chile, how does masculinity negotiate a national subject position in
relation to the decentralizing forces of economic aglomerization? In Trujillo‟s Dominican
Republic, how do masculinities interact and evolve during the rise of the monolithic fatherfigure? I will examine these questions in my research, focusing on the relationship between
masculinities.
In dialoguing with hegemonic masculinity, the construct of nation building in Latin
America is necessarily conjured, as Doris Sommer has showed in her seminal Foundational
Fictions: gender and the body are intrinsic to the construction and imagination of a national
space with national boundaries and national subjects. Claire Taylor‟s 2009 anthology titled
Identity, Nation, Discourse: Latin American Women Writers and Artists further explores the
construct of nation through/with/for identity. As the hegemony is directed towards
establishing and perpetuating a power structure, the role of masculinity is paramount to the
discussions of power. Men, and more importantly masculinity, shape the Foucaultian notion
of power.
30
Beyond actively defining the project of nation, “the male body claims its centrality as
the hero figure, this centrality makes his body an object of desire […] On the other hand, if
virility is prestigious, effeminacy is dishonorable,” thereby placing virility at the center of
national aesthetics (Domínguez Ruvalcaba 65). Men are not only central as political bodies;
they are also primordial in aesthetic representations and allegorical constructions of the
nation. Beyond simply being a body defined anatomically as male, the bodies that come to
define national aesthetics are virile. They are strong, powerful, and definitive. They are
discursive and visual avatars of hegemonic masculinity. An example as simple as Nazi
Germany illustrates how the figure of the well-built, blonde and blue-eyed soldier is the axis
mundi of the Third Reich. In Jaime Bayly‟s No se lo digas a nadie (1994), the protagonist‟s
father exemplifies the idealized center of the family. Sporting a moustache, a suit and tie, and
a large penis, he perpetuates the image and discourse of the hegemonic onto a domestic
space. Aside from his functionality, the man ontologically adheres to a specific aesthetic
body that George Mosse identifies as being so important to the imagining of the nation.
If men and masculinity are central to the imagining (or inoperativeness, as Jean-Luc
Nancy would argue) of the nation, then an epistemological space, aside from structure, is
needed to discuss the construction of power. Ángel Rama, and as a follow-up, Jean Franco,
discuss the role of the intellectual in public discourse. Rama identifies the city, the “ciudad
letrada,” as the place where the male intellectual holds court. Franco, in turn, examines the
“fall” of the lettered city in her analysis of Latin America during and after the Cold War. To
her, the city has lost its place as the center of discourse, as the public intellectual fades and is
diluted by political, economic and social paradigms and events during the 20th century. The
final section of Franco‟s book, “A Cultural Revolution,” delves into Latin American
31
narratives during the years of crisis. Numerating several important events such as the civil
wars in Central America, she notes that “these were not only significant political changes that
removed or weakened ideological opposition to neoliberal reform” and that “they also
changed the coordinates of people‟s lives, their expectations, their possibilities” (179). This
period of change during the second half of the 20th century triggered not only an existential
crisis in Latin America with the shifts of government and the anniversary of Columbus
“discovering” the New World, but also a renewed spatial interest in the conception of the
nation-state. Traditional, 19th-century models of the Center-Periphery were debunked, or at
least challenged by indigenous and guerrilla groups such as the Zapatistas in Mexico and the
Shining Path in Peru. Literary movements such as indigenismo, though peaking in the first
quarter of the 20th century, saw a resurgence. It is not accidental that the novels discussed in
the following pages utilize the urban landscape as a backdrop or matrix of power and gender
construction. They polemicize the traditional referent of the city as an identifying trope,
relating social and economic changes of fin-du-siècle Latin America within the diegesis.
These changes at the local and national level coincide with what masculinity studies
has called a crisis in masculinity in Latin America and beyond. The idea of crisis is
highlighted by the changing social roles of men in a more democratic and meritocratic social
system, brought about by what José Olavarría identifies as “las políticas de ajuste económico,
la reformulación del papel del Estado, la creciente globalización de la economía y de los
intercambios culturales” (“Masculinidades en América Latina” 1). These processes culminate
in a demographic shift that leaves the Latin American male in a freefall, away from the
traditional position of power at the familial and societal level. It is clear from Olavarría‟s
comments that the real trigger of the crisis is the economic system of neoliberalism that
32
spreads throughout the continent like an unchecked cancer in the latter half of the 20th
century. The economic and political strategies of liberalized markets and opened borders
exasperate a system in flux to the point that traditional gender roles and systems of
expression are supplanted and/or glossed over by imported ideas.
More importantly, the effects of neoliberalism on contemporary Latin American
societies provide a seismic point in the study of the continent‟s fiction as writers struggle to
capture the magnitude of change in their works. Just as products and identities are imported
from the North and the East, there is a conscious attempt to reintegrate or resemanticize the
local in the fictions of authors such as Juan Villoro, Maurice Echeverría, Hernán Rivera
Letelier and Franz Galich. The cultural work done by fictions of this era are equally
concerned with unearthing a Latin American identity as they are with examining the impacts
of cultural mixing and hybridity that comes as a result of globalization and freer markets.
Looking at the ideas of theorists such as Homi Bhaba, Arjun Appadurai, Nestor García
Canclini and Frederic Jameson amongst others, I examine in these pages the influence of
cultural homogenization and heterogenization in the construct of a gendered identity in Latin
America.
In my analysis, I argue that neoliberalism provides more than a simple backdrop to
these contemporary narratives. It is an aesthetic point of reference, as writers attempt to
capture the economic nuances of trade and markets, and the importance of capital in the
characters and worlds they textually put together. Money, commodification, and marketing
become fundamental aesthetic and poetic inspirations in the works of Sergio Ramírez,
Santiago Roncagliolo and Pedro Lemebel amongst others as they inscribe economic models
into the gendered bodies that populate their texts. The philosophy and principles of free-
33
market economics, I argue, is fundamental to the reading of gender in contemporary Latin
American fiction.
Returning to a temporal reference, the 1990s also include a formation of a “new
narrative” in countries such as Mexico, Chile and Peru. These writers are aware of identity as
it applies and is formed by transnational factors and symbols, thereby augmenting the
importance of gender and sexuality. (Gendered) spaces become important as writers such as
Alberto Fuguet and Iván Thays dialogue directly with the city as a place of becoming. The
former uses Santiago in his coming-of-age Tinta roja (1996) as a referent to the protagonist
and to the homosocial mass of journalists who populate the novel. In Cuerpo naúfrago
(2005), Ana Clavel focuses on the notion of individuals and spaces in the process of “doing”
gender (Butler, Gender Trouble). Her protagonist undergoes an over-night shift from being a
woman into a man and must negotiate her new physical form with her learned behavior of
being. Similarly, she notices how the bathroom as a space does gender, examining the
anthropomorphic characteristics of urinals across the city. Following Judith Butler, Clavel
emphasizes the importance of semiotics in the construct of gender and how behavior and
space can be central to its perpetuation and iteration.
These writers, however, are equally conscious of the social implications of their
fiction as they strive to keep in mind the tangible constructs of identity that anchor their
exercises and experiments with representation. Even when playing with the notion of
transvestitism and transgenderism in Sirena Selena vestida de pena, Mayra Santos-Febres
never loses sight of the economic realities of the Dominican Republic in relation to its more
open-minded neighbor, in stark opposition to the earlier fictions of Severo Sarduy for
example. Similarly, Clavel‟s play on masculinity and the body is conscious of the acceptance
34
of subordinate sexualities in Europe, where the powers of the Latin phallus are not
suffocating, as Ilan Stavans would argue. What I am trying to say is that though there is a
playful experimentation with gender and masculinity, there is not a complete disassociation
with the realities and effects of neoliberalism as these authors attempt a discursive
approximation to identity.
With that being said, I title my dissertation “Masculine Textualities: Gender and
Neoliberalism in Contemporary Latin American Fiction.” The title is a knowingly in homage
to David William Foster‟s Sexual Textualities: Essays on Queer(ing) Latin American Writing
(1997), which is a primordial text in understanding Queer subjectivities in Latin American
fiction. Taking as an axiom the plurality of Latin American masculinities that José Olavarría
and José Toro-Alfonso among others theorize, I focus on how these different gender
expressions interact with each other in an ever-changing matrix of power that is increasingly
global in its boundaries. More importantly, I focus on the socio-categorical work done by
Connell and its instrumentation in contemporary fictions, but I also keep in mind the writing
of the male body, reflecting on Sifuentes-Jáuregui‟s assertion that that bodies do matter,
keeping in mind the economic, political and cultural affronts extant in an age of
homogeneity. To do so, I propose the following chapters to organize my textual analysis of
novels written in Latin America in the last twenty years:
1) Market(ing) Masculinities / Materializing Bodies in Latin America’s New
Historical Novel
2) Lyrical Textualities: Music and Musicality in the (De)Construction of
Masculinities
35
3) From the Spatial to the Virtual: Genderized and Genderizing Spaces in the
Metropolis
4) Hard Drives, Cyborgs, and Viagra: New Conceptualizations of Masculinities and
the Body
An initial glance at this abbreviated table of contents illuminates a path of action
towards establishing a practice of the study of masculinities in contemporary fiction. Keeping
in mind broader topics such as history, popular culture, urban landscapes and the role of
globalization in formerly national narratives, I aim to show not only how the male body and
masculinities are written, but also to what effect within the text.
In the first chapter, I take into account Sergio Ramírez‟s Margarita, está linda la mar
(1998), Cristina Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar (1999), Mario Vargas Llosa‟s La fiesta
del Chivo (2000), and Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero (2001).13 These novels are
critically collectivized under the contentious umbrella of the New Historical Novel because
they decenter traditional constructs of the past in favor of a paradigm shifting reimagining of
historical events, which are invariably linked to questions of the present. The past is not a
literary exercise in these novels, but is instead a means to reflect on the status quo. They are,
furthermore, works that construct and dethrone the figure of the Latin American caudillo,
which I argue to be a central figure in the reconstruction of a contemporary masculine
identity. I examine how these novels on the one hand create systems of masculinities that
dialogue with one another in a textual process of elimination to establish viable models of
gender and subjectivity for the nation. On the other hand, I suggest that the framework and
13
Certain texts such as Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar will be used in subsequent chapters as my study is
not divided into monographic studies of individual novels but is instead meant to be a fluid interchange of ideas
and trends between chapters and between novels. The analytic tools and perspectives used in each chapter
elucidate unique inquiries into each text.
36
reality of neoliberalism is acutely significant in the aesthetic representations of the body, as I
link different anatomical sites of the male anatomy with specific points of discourse vis-à-vis
the politico-economic aftereffects of neoliberal policy.
I follow up this hermeneutic approach of reading neoliberalism and the male body in
the second chapter through an analysis of the usage of musical intertexts in contemporary
fiction. Just as history is intrinsic to understanding and conceiving an idea of self (and
nation), I posit that music establishes a cultural referent for texts that explore gender in
relation to the national. Beginning with Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero, I put forth a critical
methodology for reading music in narrative, borrowing from the cinematic convention of the
Original Soundtrack as a semiotic doubling that enriches discourses of gender. Using this
approximation to the text, I examine Mayra Montero‟s La última noche que pasé contigo
(1992) as an example of how criticism has taken a blinded approach to studying gender in the
text by only focusing on feminine and Queer expressions. My analysis differs from these
takes as I center myself on the male protagonist and the implications of bolero music on his
masculinity. I then trace how music functions as a discursive tool in delineating the spaces of
masculinity in Alfredo Bryce Echenique, arguing that the inclusion of musical registers and
tones spatializes the narrative, localizing it in the face of globalization. The final project in
this chapter concerns the cultural inclusion of non-indigenous popular music in the continent.
Taking into account texts by Franz Galich, I look at how a narrative reappropriation of rock
music cements an authorial treatise of post-revolutionary Central American masculinity in
the wake of US incursions and involvement. Music, I argue, fundaments Galich‟s writing of
challenging masculinities that survive in the wake of dictatorships and civil wars.
37
The study of rock music in the region calls to attention the geographical limitations
and boundaries of the text, which in the third chapter I confront as I propose a study of
masculinities through the motif of space that necessitates a topographic separation of center
and periphery. Working with the idea that space is genderizing and genderized, the pages of
this chapter study various critical approaches to quantifying and specifying textual gender
constructs within the matrix of the city. Using Edward Soja‟s notions of the city as a text and
the Deleuze and Guattari model of rhizomatic spaces, I look at how the city and gender are
conceived in the works of Ana Clavel, tracing similar trajectories and articulating lines of
flight away from the traditional relationship between patriarchy and the urban center. In this
chapter I highlight the problematic of articulating a spatial conception of gender within
narrative just as the urban referents of space fragment and dissolve into disparate and
archipelagic centers of control, dispelling the traditional centers of the male homosocial in
Latin America. The city is less and less the phallic compendium of buildings and geographies
that Luis Zapata describes in El vampiro de la colonia Roma and is instead substituted by a
polycentered and polyvalenced place that decenters the urban subject.
It is after this study of space vis-à-vis masculinity that I culminate my analysis with
an examination of contemporary novels that are reactive to the globalized reality of Latin
America, and by extension its cities. This fourth chapter addresses the need to unearth and
specify an indigenous textual theory and practice of masculinity in contemporary Latin
American literature. I examine how ideas such as ecomasculinity and technomasculinity
rearticulate the male body at times of crisis and support the establishment of a modern
system of gender that is reactive to Connell‟s theorization of the global hegemonic gender
expression of transnational business masculinity. I look at how Santiago Roncagliolo
38
appropriates the gendered cyborg as a textual affront to the tenets of the hegemonic order,
focusing on how non-biological masculinities provide an analytic tool to understanding and
potentially confronting the negative effects of a unified controlling subject position. In this
final chapter I also include a novel that openly speaks about impotence and the vulnerability
of men under patriarchy, calling to attention the recent trend of explicating male sexuality
beyond the textual façade of the brothel and the violence exerted onto women and Queer
bodies.
The trends and postulates I examine engage in a complex textual theatre that novelists
today weave into their fictions, fully conscious of a theoretical understanding of gender that
influences their characterizations. In broad terms we often see explicit citations of Butler,
Garber, and Kristeva amongst others, whether as epigraphs or footnotes in the works of
Clavel and Rivera Garza. In other works, the intertextual references to theory are more
subtle; a quick leafing through Galich, Santos-Febres, and Lemebel underscore the
importance of performativity and iteration over an essential quality of gender. This cognitive
practice of gender illuminates the construction of masculinities, as authors such as Vargas
Llosa and Serna are aware of the multiple layers and variations of the gender expression, not
limiting their writing of the Latin American male to the hegemonic position. It is through a
theoretically conscious text that problematizes Stavan‟s Latin phallus and the idea of
omnipotent masculinity can we evidence some other telling components of contemporary
fictions and how they deal with masculinity.
On the one hand there is an ample usage of popular culture intertexts such as cinema
and music to lend another tier of discourse to the novel, enticing the reader to go beyond the
printed page to construct a multi-faceted and globalized notion of gender. Men in these
39
fictions are not stereotypes or tropes, but are intricately juxtaposed to the erotics of the bolero
or bachata, and/or combined with the visual aesthetics of Hollywood and comic book
masculinities to create a novelistic figure that stretches the borders of the genre. This genrebending characterization of masculinity is gender-bending in its successful rupture of the
virile, homosocial body that Biron and others choose to focus on.
The successful deconstruction of the façade inculcates a consciousness of the body
that goes beyond the performative, as there is an acute authorial focus on how the male body
is written. I am not, however, talking about simple characterizations that previously united
the virile, muscular body with the idea of nation. Instead, what we see in these texts is a
fixation on the body as a discursive space with individual and specific loci that capture a
broader message that is emblematic of the social contexts described and or replicated in
fiction. The penis is no longer the all-powerful “index of masculine value, as well as the
passport to glorious erotic adventure” (Stavans 53) but is instead a site of political
malleability, where challengers and dictators negotiate their claims of control. Similarly, the
testes become a site of economics, as the most reproductive grouping of cells in the human
body metaphorize the economic climate of countries run amok by liberalization. Castration is
not so much a psychoanalytic or physical threat, but is instead a critique of neoliberal
tendencies that make the rich richer at the cost of millions. Last but not least is the anus,
which I argue is not only a site of queerness, but also in its inversion, a point of political
critique, as the subsequent staining of the figure abjects it from the homosocial and viable
components of society.14 It is easy to fall into the temptation of undertaking a psychoanalytic
14
The anus has been discussed by Sifuentes-Jáuregui in a study of Manuel Puig‟s El beso de la mujer araña
(1976), but my reading of the corporal site is not done through the optic of psychoanalysis but instead according
to a hermeneutic praxis of juxtaposition between the literary body and the national body. Following this
argumentation, the anus and other anatomical sites become corporal discursive spaces within the larger dialogic
40
reading of the texts I study, particularly given my usage of terms such as castration and the
focus on the anus. Though I mention terms that are often used and cited in psychoanalysis, I
want to make it clear that the focus of my study resides in the textualities of gender and how
and why masculinity and the male body is written, and to what effect given the political,
economic and social climate of Latin America.
On the other hand, these different anatomical cues and positions of discourse
establish what I call a market of masculinities in these fictions, as different positions are
played off one another, problematizing the relationship between masculinities. The end-game
in this standoff involves a thesis on identity as competing masculinities engage in a winnertakes-all game of power that establishes an authorial position vis-à-vis the nation. We note,
for example, how Rivera Garza creates a system of stereotypes and countertypes in Nadie me
verá llorar that obfuscates the position of the patriarch and the dictator in favor of less
structured and virile masculinities, pushing forward an idea of nation that is not intimately
linked to the traditional stereotype of the Mexican macho. In a similar vein, but dealing with
post-war Central America, Franz Galich juxtaposes competing masculinities in the powervoid left by the United States and the failed revolutions, putting forth a less-than-virile
example for the region‟s future.
Last but not least, we see a transnational theatre of masculinities in the fictions of
writers such as Carlos Labbé, Hernán Rodríguez Matte, Santiago Roncagliolo and Ana
Clavel, where the figure of the hegemonic is an international player that shows no mercy in
amassing economic and sexual gains.
of the nation and society, without necessarily involving the individual process of subject formation that
psychoanalysis specifies.
41
The idea of transnationality is poignant, as a cursory glance at these pages reveals no
true nationality to the texts studied. I freely interrelate Mexican and Chilean novels,
Nicaraguan and Peruvian texts, arguing that these contemporary fictions can no longer be
considered within a canon of national literature. Any semblance of a national corpus, I argue,
can be put to rest with the advent of the Boom writers and the subsequent mass-marketing of
Latin American fiction, culminating with what we see today, and what I jokingly refer to as
the Generation Alfaguara, or a group of writers who claim one (at times two) passport(s), live
away from their country of origin, and publish through transnational editorials, and in
multiple venues such as newspapers, journals, anthologies, and the internet. The writers I
work with are reflective of a new age in Latin American fiction that is just as reactive to
neoliberal trends as the diegeses and characters that populate their pages. They are equally at
ease talking about Tokyo as they are about Lima, marketing themselves as writers that go
beyond the lettered cities of yore. Though there is a propensity to go beyond the borders of
Latin America in their fiction, I argue, however, that they are immediately conscious of their
position as Latin American writers. An example can be seen in the work of Roncagliolo;
though Tan cerca de la vida (2010) takes place in Tokyo, the author‟s body of work
including his essayistic production is forever conscious of the issues faced in his native Peru
and the continent as a whole.
The moniker of Generation Alfaguara is in turn intimately connected to the neoliberal
paradigm as the transnational free trade of authors and their writings is reflective of the tenet
of opening markets. That being said, however, the writers who operate across borders are
paradoxically connected to the delineations of nation, as is the case with Roncagliolo or
Vargas Llosa. Though they participate in a global economy of fiction that resists national
42
denominations, their thoughts and narratives are intimately connected to the sociopolitical
conditions at the local level.
Adding to this idea, the Generation of writers I deal with is not a traditional
generation in terms of age, gender, or political thought, but is instead held together by the
cementing effect of the transnational editorials that market its fiction. Writers such as Galich
who do not necessarily publish with Alfaguara or Planeta are still inspired by the markets of
distribution and production enabled by the larger houses. They further this idea of the
paradox of neoliberalism in recent Latin American fiction, as they are both deterritorialized
and reterritorialized by the transnational publishing economy.
The tangible effects of this movement can be seen in the paradox of masculinity that
neoliberalism creates in these texts, which I flush out in greater detail through the
progression of subsequent chapters. Though neoliberalism on the one hand would seemingly
suggest an expression of masculinities, its gendered avatar of transnational business
masculinity develops a position of hegemony that textually creates a paradigm of tension
with indigenous masculinities. This paradox is fundamental in understanding the need to
write masculinities, as I argue that the neoliberal marketing of contemporary fiction engages
an authorial fixation on writing marketable masculinities and male bodies. These masculine
textualities are products and characteristics of the Generation Alfaguara that writes for a
market of readers and critics that openly accept their fictionalizations of issues of race,
gender, and identity. Paradoxically, their engagement within a neoliberal market of narrative
is poignant in its usage of the male body as a system and trope of cultural and ideological
affrontation with the structures of globalization, as they write fictions that are conscious of
and reactive to the crises brought about by neoliberal tendencies in Latin America.
43
Building on the idea of materialized and marketable masculinities, these fictions blur
the borders of nation and space to engage in a continental/international affront to the powers
of neoliberalism. The focus on materialized masculinity, which is to say not solely an
awareness of the economic narrative viability of different male characters but also their
material constitution, takes on a high-tech note as writers reconceptualize the male body as a
computer or cyborg that engages questions of identity in relation to neoliberalism in virtual
and spatial fields of battle.
It is through these different approaches and postulates to the texts at hand that I hope
to provide the reader with a caveat into how and why masculinities are written today in Latin
America, keeping in mind the social implications of constructing the male body and
masculine gender expressions. Without falling into the dichotomy of masculinity versus a
specific or generic Other, I keep in mind the plurality of masculinities in my analysis,
consciously aware of the many male characters that do not completely subscribe to the tenets
of patriarchy and hegemony. By doing so these pages provide a fresh take on the topic,
differing from recent critical approaches, with the hope of providing some needed insights to
the field of Latin American masculinity studies.
44
CHAPTER 2
MARKET(ING) MASCULINITIES / MATERIALIZING BODIES IN LATIN AMERICA‟S
NEW HISTORICAL NOVEL
In a print culture focused on the past, where writers both rising and established have
repeatedly followed the strategy of fictionalizing the history of the continent, authors (and
critics) have become key instruments in societies‟ rewriting of societies. This remembering
by means of fiction has continued to examine the figure of the dictator in Latin America as
an organizational position in political and sexual spheres, as these caudillos sit up as
discursive targets, which we can understand to be characterized by an omnipotent and hypervirile masculinity. The importance of history and the examining of the past have
contemporary implications in Latin America before, during, and after the 1990s. As María
Cristina Pons reckons, the rewriting of the past from the margins and peripheral positions “le
da a la novela latinoamericana contemporánea una dimensión reflexiva y un carácter político,
y no meramente filosófico” (268). Continuing with this thought, Michael Rössner notes, “el
nuevo interés por la novela histórica tiene todavía que ver con la búsqueda de la identidad
continental” (170).
This search for identity is paired with what Gareth Williams calls a shift in “the
underlying telos of the nation” (23), which “is not a single process of evolution but an
accumulation of distinct and uneven processes of transition toward so-called globalization,”
which has been brought about by “neoliberal restructuring of the nation-state together with
the emergence of the transnational marketplace as a new and dominant force throughout
Latin America” (23). As a foundational work to Williams‟s thesis, Nestor García Canclini
observes that part of this process revolves around a dissolution of the great narratives that
“used to order and hierarchize the periods of the patrimony and the flora of cultured and
popular works in which societies and classes recognized each other and consecrated their
values” (243-44). This search is not a process within the nation, but is by necessity and
consequence of economic and political developments, a transnational questioning. This
identity comes into play just as capital markets enjoy a free-floating and deterritorialized era
of inversion. As Fredric Jameson observes, “the goal of production no longer lies in any
specific market, any specific set of consumers or social and individual needs, but rather in its
transformation into that element which by definition has no content or territory” (153). This
shift, critics note, has led to both a deterritorialization and dematerialization of economic
systems.
These processes are products of what economists and politicians call neoliberalism.
Though the term is neither an official designation of policy, nor a rulebook for states to
follow, it is characterized by three broad components: the privatization of state-owned
enterprises, austerity programs, and the opening of trade barriers (Day 21). As I explicate in
my introduction, research regarding gender and sexuality has followed a similar course, with
what can be observed as a deterritorialization of theorists and theories. This process, in turn,
coincides with a boom in caudillo novels.15
15
As Carlos Pacheco explains, the transition to democratic governments on the continent has led to a rise in the
writing of novels of and about dictators (7). Commenting on the inefficacy of previous critical work done on the
dictator narrative, which established congruencies and disjuncts between novels and reality, Pacheco surmises
that a new branch of study must undertake an analysis of the narrative in itself and examine how and why
dictators are written (42). As Lola Colomina-Garrigós notes, the dictator novels from the 90s evidence a shift
from their antecedents in the 80s and 70s. The critic summarizes previous studies done on the genre and
establishes three distinct phases. Colomina-Garrigós‟s addition to the field lies in her identifying a new phase in
46
These new narratives are not so much concerned with exploring polyphonic voices of
the dictator but are instead geared towards a presentation of a singular alternative histore
official history championed by regimes. This alternative history is substantiated by and
through a retooling of the male body and an exploration of the shift in the underlying telos of
masculinity that has been brought about by neoliberal policies.16
Taking into account Sergio Ramírez‟s Margarita, está linda la mar (1998), Cristina
Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar (1999), Mario Vargas Llosa‟s La fiesta del Chivo
(2000), and Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero (2001), in these pages I focus on the
process of writing masculinities and the dictator; the construction of texts that are brought
alive by characters inscribed on the surface in black ink, yet which are created and come to
life in a more than three-dimensional space. This space, beyond the imaginary and beyond
the literary, is polytemporal, polyphonic, and polyveracious. Some critics have chosen to call
this space the new historical novel because it decenters traditional constructs of the past in
favor of a new configuration of historical events.17
the genre beginning in the 1990s, where authors leave behind questions of representation and authorial authority
in favor of the writing of marginalized and alternative versions of history.
16
This investigation follows Norma Fuller‟s assertion that “la identidad de género masculina debe ser entendida
dentro de un marco mayor, como la expresion de un orden sociopolitico, fundado en el control de los medios
estrategicos de produccion y reproduccion, como son el parentesco, los sistemas economicos y politicos y del
poder simbolico que igualan al orden patriarcal con el „mundo real‟” (57).
17
Seymour Menton establishes six general characteristics for this genre of novel. First, there is an attempt at
probing philosophical ideas, instead of simply mimetically reproducing the past. Second, there is a distortion of
history through omissions, exaggerations and anachronisms. Third, there is a fictionalization of historical
characters that differs from the writing of purely fictitious characters. Menton mentions the usage of
metaliterary devices as authors comment on their own works, exhibiting a consciousness of the process of
writing; of putting pen(is) to paper. Fifth, the narratives in this genre are bonded to other texts and discourses as
intertexts. Lastly, Menton notes the dialogic, carnavalesque, parodic, and heteroglossic nature of these new
novels (New Historical Novel 42-5). María Cristina Pons agrees with Menton on most points, but further adds
that these new historical novels do not pretend to be neutral in their takes on history: they are subjective and
stress the relativity of historiography (256). Furthermore, they reject the supposition of historical truth and the
notion of historical progress, and put forward new nomos of representation from the margins of the social.
Ramón Luis Acevedo, citing Fernando Aínsa, adds to the critical corpus of the new historical novel, noting that
47
The choice of novels provides a variety of authors that do and do not subscribe to the
phallic voice of patriarchal systems. Ramírez writes from a position of authority within the
Sandinista government. Rivera Garza writes with a female, though gender-ambiguous, pen;
Vargas Llosa takes the pen at its most phallic, in textual and political terms, though his own
defeat and exile from Peru can be read in his version of the caudillo; and lastly, Lemebel
queers the text by dressing, transgendering, and metaliterizing the pen, providing a glimpse
into a counter-voice of the hegemonic that Vargas Llosa explores in his retelling of the death
of the Chivo. These multiple positions in the writing of history vis-à-vis identity are autoreflexive of their own tools, as they plant the problematic of the legitimacy of these
alternative versions of history (Pons 206) against the traditional dominant masculinity of the
South American dictator figure. These authors, importantly, circumscribe the figure of the
dictator not through polyphonic confusions or ambiguities, but instead put their own mark on
the trope by displacing the figure along lines of gender composition and sexual expression
that dialogue directly with Raewyn Connell‟s theorization of hierarchical and plural
masculinities.18 In her seminal Masculinities (1995), the critic would argue that masculinities
exist in a matrix of power dominated by a hegemonic variant that permits and perpetuates the
subjugation of the feminine subject/gender position by an effective social, political and
the genre promulgates a multiplicity of perspectives and interpretations of the past and a distancing from the
mythological hegemony of historiography (4).
18
The use of Connell‟s theory in dealing with Latin American literature and culture is documented and
prevalent. In an excellent anthology on masculinity in Latin America, Lo masculino en evidencia:
Investigaciones sobre la masculinidad (2009), José Toro-Alfonso repeatedly cites Connell‟s ideas in his
introductory remarks (14-23). Other critics, such as Oscar Misael Hernández, use Connell‟s ideas on hegemony
and its challengers without specific citation. Hernández uses the terms “modelo de masculinidad hegemónica”
and “modelo normativo de masculinidad” (68) in “Estudios sobre masculinidades. Aportes desde América
Latina” (2008) without referencing Connell‟s work in Masculinities (1995). Hernández further adds that “los
estudiosos/as de los hombres en America Latina ha propuesto superar la nocion de masculinidad y suplirla por
masculinidades, reconociendo la diversidad de experiencias e identidades de los hombres y los riesgos de una
perspectiva esencialista que encierre a todos los hombres en una sola identidad” (68). The critic attempts to
summarize the state of masculinity studies in Latin America but fails to identify their underlying model.
48
economic strategy (77). These authors furthermore engage in a displacement of the dictator
that is scripted by and in reaction to the economic and social changes brought about by endof-the-century politics in Latin America. As José Olavarría notes, “los procesos
macrosociales y económicos, así como la disponibilidad de recursos que hacen de nexo entre
esas políticas macros y la vida cotidiana” (328) have come to form a crisis in masculinity that
these novels react to.
Commoditizing Resources: The Male Body in Margarita, está linda la mar.
The possibilities of both spatial and temporal displacements through fiction can be
evidenced in Sergio Ramírez‟s Margarita, está linda la mar (1998). By means of a dual
inquiry into the past, Ramírez puts under the microscope the political dictator, Anastasio
Somoza García, and the poet and father of modernismo, Rubén Darío. The novel juxtaposes
the return of Darío to Nicaragua in 1907 after his stay in Europe, with the plot to assassinate
the dictator Somoza García in 1956. Ramírez recounts in candid detail both the alcoholism of
the poet and the antics of the conspirators as they attempt to organize a foolproof plan to
liberate the country.
In a study on contemporary novels of the dictator, Gabriela Polit Dueñas notes that
the novel marks a new phase in the caudillo genre, as “el carisma, la personalidad y la
capacidad personal de encarnar un poder absoluto – elementos que obsesionaron a los
escritores en décadas anteriores – dejan de ser la preocupación del autor,” and that “tampoco
hay una idealización de la militancia de izquierda” (130). The critic notes that the
assassination of Somoza is carried out by individuals, and is captured as a political happening
49
instead of a product of a common political ideal (130). Polit Dueñas asserts that the novel
marks a new phase that shows “un profundo desencanto con el poder y el quehacer de la
política” (130). While this can be read in the context of apolitical ennui from the left after the
fall of the communist bloc and the failure of popular revolutions such as the Sandinistas, the
critic suggests that the novel is conceived from the author‟s own political life.
Margarita, está linda la mar can be read as a reflection of the personal on the
political vis-à-vis the national, as Ramírez draws parallels between two masculinities that
represent the modern Nicaraguan state: the authoritarian politician, and the eloquent man of
letters. This dualism in the imagining of the nation is systematically approached in the novel
through the temporal displacements between the assassination of Somoza by the poet
Rigoberto López Pérez, and the return of Rubén Darío to the continent after a stay in Europe.
This connection was cemented by the author at a stop in New York during a promotional tour
of the novel. Ramírez affirms that Nicaragua is the only Latin American country whose
father-figure is a poet and not a caudillo, explicating “por esta razón en Nicaragua todos
somos poetas, y aquel que no lo es, tiene que aparentarlo” (Polit Dueñas 135).
In her attempt to trace Ramírez‟s published work in tandem with his political life,
Polit Dueñas hesitates in performing a close reading of the text and how it writes gender and
sexuality, and what ramifications these have on the national imaginary. Though the critic
employs a psychoanalytic reading to construct a connective thread between Darío, Rigoberto,
and Ramírez, her study does not address the constructions of masculinities within the text.
This is not to say that the national imaginary is left aside completely, as she argues that the
figure of the poet competes with the dictator to assert a phallic masculinity that identifies the
former as a founding father of the nation (150). The physical brain of the poet is juxtaposed
50
with the penis as representative of power, best evidenced in the final pages of the novel as
Quirón buries a jar containing Rigoberto‟s castrated organs next to the buried jar containing
Darío‟s stolen brain.
Polit Dueñas‟s reading identifies the physical penis as the metonymic phallus, which
correlates with a possession of power. The cultural critic, Ilan Stavans, summarizes the
power of the phallus in Latin America, when he explains that both men and women
“seemingly revolve around the phallus, an object of intense adoration, the symbol of absolute
power and satisfaction. It is the source of the macho‟s self-assurance and control, sexual and
psychological, and the envy of the Hispanic woman” (51). Ramírez‟s text, however, upon
closer inspection displaces the physical phallus from the penis to the testicles, asserting these
reproductive factories as the source of masculinity and power. The hegemony is not defined
by being able to urinate standing up, as is the desire of La Caimana (304), or by being able to
sustain an erection, as we note Darío‟s impotence (73), but is instead only characterized by
possessing the reproductive testes of the male. Following this trend, Vargas Llosa
underscores the importance of the testicles in identifying power and masculinity, as it is only
through their removal that the subject loses power, as I will explicate later. Ramírez suggests
the same, as one of the conspirators asserts that “éste es un país de eunucos. Se engorda más
fácil cuando no se tiene testículos” (218). The eunuch, as we all know, lacks testicles and not
a penis, thereby emphasizing the importance of these productive sexual organs in the
construct of masculinity vis-à-vis subjectivity. I underline the productivity of the testicles as
unlike the penis, which serves a coital and urological purpose, the testicles are solely
responsible for creating, storing, and disseminating the subject either through the prosthesis
of the offspring, or through the act of copious ejaculation that defines virility. The anatomy
51
of the male, then, suggests a deviation from Piedra‟s notion of the pen(is), as it is not
necessarily the organic phallus that circumscribes masculinity and Power, but is instead a
paradigm of economic productivity that leads to a writing of the past with the aim of
understanding contemporary Latin American society.19
By emphasizing the corporeality of the male subject in Margarita, está linda la mar,
Ramírez highlights the construct of masculinity within the novel as a crossroads in
understanding the present through a mythification of the past in his native Nicaragua. As José
Ángel Vargas has studied, Ramírez mythifies and then demythifies important historical
figures in order to construct “un ícono de la realidad de un país que aparece por una parte
pletórico de gloria, y por otra, castigado terriblemente por el poder político” (33). The leftist
revolutionary figure of Sandino is described as having “los huevos […] enormes y
sonrosados, como la posturda del ave fénix” (218). The failure of the left in contemporary
Nicaraguan politics is addressed in the description of the male‟s testicles, as they will rise
again like the mythical bird. Their productivity is stressed in opposition to the relative
impotency of the penis, as the novel is rife with characters with failing organs that curiously
belong to the homosocial. To further emphasize the connection between the testes and
subjectivity, Somoza on his deathbed orders his troops to castrate Rigoberto. He stresses the
cutting of the “huevos” and not the penis.
As Somoza‟s men round up the plethora of suspects, Rigoberto‟s testicles in a bottle
are described as resembling a fetus (367). This last observation suggests that the nation is
birthed from the testicles of the poet, and not his penis. The testes establish a genealogy
19
Keeping with this idea, Vargas Llosa‟s Trujillo in La fiesta del Chivo similarly berates his challengers by
removing their testicles. In opposition to local bishops who sermonize against the regime, Trujillo exclaims:
“¡Los maldecidos! ¡Los cuervos! ¡Los eunucos!” (32). By figuratively castrating those opposing his rule,
Trujillo affirms that the clergy are “traidor[es] a Dios y a Trujillo y a su condición de varón” (32).
52
amongst sons and fathers, and only by eliminating them can the son avenge the father.
Trujillo‟s sons in La fiesta del Chivo best represent this trope, but it is extant in Ramírez‟s
narrative as well. When one of the conspirators, Cordelio, returns to León, he is asked by a
priest if he is going to hang by the testicles the coronel who killed his father (253). The testes
represent the connection between the father and the son, as the son is merely a prosthesis
produced in the scrotal sac. By focusing on the testes, the text hints at an economic
understanding of the nation that is not necessarily connected to the equivalency of the penis
to the Lacanian phallus that Polit Dueñas suggests is pervasive in the novel (143-150).
From an etymological standpoint, the testicles originate from the Latin “witness.”
They witness virility, masculinity, reproduction, and even, as in Margarita, está linda la mar,
the subjectification and desubjectification of individuals. From an anatomical standpoint, the
testes house the development of germ cells into reproductive gametes. It is only by means of
the testicles that the male individual can reproduce. Masculinity is, therefore, not solely
formed by a psychoanalytic construct, but is instead manufactured in tandem with the idea of
economic productivity, highlighting the economic changes in Nicaragua after the handover of
the government from Ramírez‟s party to the rightwing Unión Nacional Opositora. The new
government, headed by Violeta Chamorro, institutes economic and social policies that
attempt to align the country with neoliberal tendencies in Latin America. Unlike Vargas
Llosa‟s Peru that undergoes a Fujishock in the early 90s, Sandinista Nicaragua refused to
incorporate the economic policies disseminated from the north. Written during a shift away
from leftist economic ideals, and Ramírez‟s own divorce from national politics, which he
will enshrine in Adiós muchachos. Una memoria de la revolución Sandinista (1999),
Margarita, está linda la mar is conscious of the economic facet of national identity.
53
Ramírez‟s emphasis on the testes as a source of masculinity, as a source of virility for both
the leftist poets and the rightist caudillos, reflects the importance of economics in imagining
the nation. By writing the castrations of Sandino, Rigoberto, and three other conspirators
(373), the author reconciles the lack of economic growth in Nicaragua during the revolution,
and its inability to undergo an urban boom. This is reflected in the descriptions of the capital
Managua in contemporary Nicaraguan fiction. It is not the urbanized, cosmopolitan
expression of McOndo as are other cities such as Santiago and Lima, but is instead deathly
and lost, emphasizing Seymour Menton‟s notion of a poetics of disillusionment in
contemporary Central American fiction, which I will elucidate in my study of Franz Galich‟s
novels.
As the testicles are paramount to the connection between masculinity and the
national, the printing press is similarly connected to the community‟s imagining of the nation
(Anderson 6). This comes as no surprise, as Ramírez continues publishing fiction during his
tenure as vice president, and during his charge of the National Council of Education from
1979 to 1984. The press in Margarita, está linda la mar, however, is the institution under
Somoza that Ramírez undermines by writing gender and sexuality onto its body. I say
undermines because he does not adhere to Connell‟s ideas of the hegemonic and how it
establishes itself through discourses of science, objectivism, and the official reporting of
history.
Ramírez notes the importance of science as a discourse of modernity and progress in
the building of the nation. His interpretation of the topic is centered on Godofredo, the
cuckolded husband of Darío‟s lover, who functions as the (de)mythified man of science in
Margarita, está linda la mar. Nicaragua during this time, however, does not enjoy a precise
54
and overbearing figure such as Somoza in the latter half of the 20th century, and must instead
contend with “el inventor paralítico que se había caído del caballo el día de San Juan
Bautista” (96). Science is further castrated from the discussion of the national through the
figure of Dr. Baltasar Cisne, a Darío fanatic and supporter of Somoza‟s regime. On the way
to León, the Dr. shares a beer with some of the conspirators, who know him from La
Caimana‟s brothel. Jorge Negrete addresses Cisne by asking him to recount how “le pidió a
La Caimana que le consiguiera la mejor de las muñecas” (108). Cisne ignores the comment,
only to have Negrete follow with “cuénteles porqué ninguna quería con usted, y cuénteles lo
que al fin le dijo aquella morenota rolliza, la Flor de un día: <<¡Ay, no, yo con usted no,
doctor! No voy a saber si me está cogiendo, o lo estoy pariendo>>” (108). The man of
science in Ramírez‟s early 20th- century Nicaragua is definitely not the mobilizing,
domineering voice that is associated with Connell‟s hegemonic masculinity in the
structuralizing of society.
Margarita, está linda la mar does, however, include a reference to Connell‟s last
strategy of control. The official reporting of history is carried out by the printing press, which
in the novel serves as a meeting point for the conspirators. We note how the building is
guarded by an “empleada, calzada con zapatos de varón” (144). This is the first step in
Ramírez‟s undermining of hegemonic power. The transvestite sweeper is hesitant to allow
the preacher Cordelio to enter, as printed on a tattered sign on the door is a warning: “AQUÍ
SOMOS CATÓLICOS Y NO ADMITIMOS PROPAGANDA PROTESTANTE” (146).
Ramírez is careful to connect the press to established hierarchies of the hegemony such as
religion, yet at the same time sidesteps gender norms to subvert the power of the press under
Somoza. This strategy of connecting the press to authority, and then sublating this very
55
authority by means of gender is best evidenced in the figure of Rafael Parrales and his
journal El Cronista.
The journal is housed in a city block with a funeral parlor and a professional school of
commerce, both of which represent legislative bodies of the state, with the former legalizing
death and the latter education. The funerary alludes to the military and traditional branches of
virile masculinity, with its emphasis on the shield. Within the journal, the printing press is
operated by human labor. Ramírez asserts the connection between El Cronista and the
government when he notes that the press is physically run by Kid Dinamita, a disgraced
boxer who is condemned to jail after stabbing his wife. He is loaned to Rafa during the
working week “como reo de confianza, para que haga girar la pesada rueda de la prensa
manual” (216). Dinamita subscribes to the virile and violent masculinity that precedes the
agenda of science and knowledge that dominates movements towards modernity from the
middle of the 20th century. He represents that violent and hyper sexualized masculinity that
Polit Dueñas connects to the dictator figure. More importantly, he reflects the
commoditization of masculinity that I allude to in the emphasis on the testicles and not the
penis in definitions of subjectivity in the novel.
Returning to the construction of hegemonic masculinity during Somoza‟s regime in
reference to the importance of the printing press, the owner of the journal proves interesting,
as he conforms to the thesis of connecting to and then subverting the institution. Ramírez
provides a genealogy of ownership of El Cronista, ending with Rafael Parrales who buys the
journal with a loan from his godmother doña Casimira who is the mother in law of Somoza.
He is further linked to the regime when one of the conspirators notes that using the journal as
a hideout for Cordelio would be “como si lo llevaras directo a manos del coronel Melisandro
56
Maravilla” (288). The apotheosis of this association occurs at the banquet, moments before
Rigoberto assaults Somoza, when Parrales sits at the dictator‟s table and tells him that
Rigoberto would be an ideal candidate to work in the national press (propaganda machine) in
Managua. His penetration into the hegemonic is formalized when he flirtatiously invites
Somoza‟s wife to dance (339).
It is in this act of courtship that we are reminded that though owning the press and
belonging to the intimate table of the dictator, Parrales is a homosexual. There is some
confusion in the novel regarding his sexuality, as he is both described as a cochón (302), who
in Nicaraguan homosexual circles is solely penetrated, and as a penetrator. As the
conspirators approach El Cronista, Rafael is described as a “loco peligrosísimo” (208) who
sensually fixates on Norberto. When the other conspirators mock him for this attention,
Norberto staunchly denies any connection with Parrales. It is only when one of the
conspirators affirms that “tuyo es tu culo. En eso, yo no me meto” (209) does Norberto
laugh, suggesting that he has been penetrated by the journalist. Herein lies the subversion of
the press, as Parrales is not only a queered figure, but is also sexually ambiguous within his
practice of homosexuality. He is not the willing penetratee that Roger Lancaster
conceptualizes in his sociological study of homosexuality in Nicaragua, but is instead a new
archetype that does not conform to traditional tenets of sexual expression. I will further
analyze this problematic in the queer and virile masculinities written in Franz Galich‟s
novels. Parrales ritualizes a practice of seduction that Reinaldo Arenas similarly enjoys in
Antes que anochezca (1992) as he is a “pescador” who catches a “pez” (205). His bait is “un
billete de mil córdobas con el perfíl en óvalo de Somoza” (205). The inclusion of this caveat
has a dual significance in the text. On the one hand, sexuality and masculinity can be bought
57
and sold, as it is alluded that the otherwise heterosexual Norberto fell trap to the “pescador.”
This builds on my reading of the importance of the testicles and not the penis in constructing
masculinity, as masculinity is for all sakes and purposes a commodity that subscribes to the
laws and pressures of the market. On the other hand, the inclusion of Somoza‟s profile in the
scheme hints at the dictator‟s economic policy, which was shrouded by under the table
dealings, oligarchic structures, and hierarchies built around nepotism and cronyism. This
system impoverished the populace and augmented the divide between rich and poor in
Nicaragua. By following the metaphoric banknote printed with the caudillo‟s portrait,
Ramírez affirms that the nation as the unassuming and anonymous “pez” assumed the role of
the sodomee. The nation under a rightwing, neoliberal government effectively becomes a
cochón. The cochón, as one of Somoza‟s sergeants asserts, is an “invertido” (302).
The verb invertir conjures a dual schema of characterization. On one level, the verb
indicates a changing or substituting of the order, position or sense of a thing. The cochón
would, therefore, be inverting heteronormative sexual practices and expressions. The verb,
however, also has an economic definition, wherein it signifies the productive application of
capital. Can the sodomee be thought of in terms of economics, as a product of caudillo and
neoliberal economics? I will touch on this in Chapter 4 when I analyze in closer detail
Galich‟s two novels on post-Sandinista Nicaragua. Returning to the new historical novel,
however, and Menton‟s criteria, the first entry of the verb invertir is a central axis in the
genre. But does the second entry of the verb reverberate in these rewritings of history?
Referencing traditional, heterosexual patriarchal societies, Gayle Rubin theorizes that the
system only functions by means of a traffic in the corporal bodies of women within the
masculine homosocial. From my analysis of Margarita, está linda la mar, it is evident that a
58
trafficking in bodies is taking place. But is it the movement of women as possessions
between men that defines Ramírez‟s reflection on the past through the optic of the present?
Trafficking in Masculinities in Nadie me verá llorar.
Cristina Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar underscores the substitutive process of
inversion as it recounts the life of a woman in the last years of Porfirio Díaz‟s regime and the
Mexican Revolution. The novel is constructed around an oppositional gender voice to the
main narrative as the photographer Joaquín Buitrago provides Rivera Garza with a framing
device to the narrative of and about Matilda Burgos, a provincial girl from Papantla,
Veracruz, who leaves the house of her uncle in Mexico City after a brief involvement with
revolutionary fighters. Matilda becomes a prostitute, and then later a patient in a psychiatric
ward where she is classified as being mentally ill after she refuses the advances of a group of
soldiers. The critical work to date on the novel has focused on the feminine/feminist aspects
of this transgressive woman who turns her back on hegemonic masculinity‟s strategies of
societal control.
Upon her arrival in Mexico City, we note how Matilda‟s uncle Marcos Burgos
functions as the axis around which society revolves. In a microeconomic sense, he structures
and dictates the machinations of his household by means of a set of rules designed to inbreed
hygiene and order. Mexican society at the beginning of the 20th century and during the last
years of the Porfiriato was underscored by the project of modernization. As Castro Ricalde
has shown, society was structured around institutions of law, hygiene, and order that
permitted a national project of modernity (viii). The historicized dictator, including the
59
domestic dictator Marcos, seems to inscribe the importance of hygiene onto his own body.
Marcos Burgos is preoccupied with cleanliness and being well-dressed.20 Writing hygiene
onto the body of these patriarchal men becomes a metonymic inscription of writing codes of
hygiene and cleanliness onto society. As Ricardo Melgar Bao notes, hygiene, as a
sociopolitical discourse, in Latin American projects of modernity is identified with the
importance of a sanitized populace in constructing the nation (31) – a nation that is, by virtue
of the power structures of government, phallogocentric.
Keeping this in mind, the hyper masculinity of the political dictator in Nadie me verá
llorar within this matrix is an afterthought, as Rivera Garza reorients the axis of power to the
domestic dictator in the form of Marcos Burgos, reflecting her own preoccupation with the
role of women in Mexican society. The author acknowledges this point, stating in an
interview that the original title of the novel was to be Yo, Matilda Burgos (Macías
Rodríguez), though it was discarded as it was too similar to testimonio-style narrative
produced by female authors in the 20th century. Nadie me verá llorar illustrates a narrative
“de desarraigo tanto vivencial como intelectual, de buscados puntos-de-fuga, de estar-en-elfuera-de-lugar, de una gozosa (aunque también sufrida y a veces violenta y violentada)
autonomía, que me gusta mucho, con la que me identifico profundamente y a la cual no voy a
dejar escapar” (Macías Rodríguez). Rivera Garza‟s own description of her work becomes
tangible in the presence of history and the dictator within the diegesis. In keeping with this
thought, before examining the role and positioning of hegemonic masculinity in Rivera
Garza‟s Porfiriato, the role of women must first be unearthed.
20
In a similar stroke, the dictator Trujillo in La fiesta del Chivo never perspires in public and Ramírez‟s Somoza
uses copious amounts of Eau de Vetiver throughout the novel.
60
Women in Rivera Garza‟s novel gain a level of subjectivity above their simplistic,
monetary value that Gayle Rubin suggests.21 They instead become cogs in a system, where
“una buena ciudadana, una muchacha decente, una mujer de buenas costumbres tiene que
empezar por aprender los nombres exactos de las horas” (119). Marcos‟s wife works like an
automaton around his schedule and preferences, which are underlined by the necessities of
personal hygiene. The lack of hygiene serves as a first physical step in the desubjectification
of men, which is followed by psychological or physical castration as a final blow.22
These acts are in essence transgressions of the established matrix of masculine power
within the social context of the diegesis. Rivera Garza, furthermore, discursively negotiates
transgression and masculinity, vis-à-vis history, through the feminine character of Matilda
who posits an un-Santalike prostitute. I refer here, of course, to Federico Gamboa‟s Santa
(1903), the novel that is a recurrent intertext in Nadie me verá llorar. Though Rivera Garza
gives a voice to this silenced faction of Mexican society that Gamboa synthesizes into the
submissive and sexualized Santa, the novel also explores the multifaceted role of
masculinities in a historicized Mexican society.
If the domestic dictator, Marcos Burgos, is akin to George Mosse‟s idea of the
masculine stereotype (6), then the other men in the text such as Joaquín Buitrago, Eduardo
Oligochea, Paul Kamack and Arturo Loayza function as countertypes. For a stereotype to
21
Women are, however, characterized as simple goods of trade between men in Vargas Llosa‟s La fiesta del
Chivo.
22
Trujillo‟s impotence in La fiesta del Chivo is predicated by the spreading stains of urine running down his
leg. Similarly, prior to the castration of Román Fernández, the dictator stains him with the putrefying excrement
that spews from a burst sanitation pipe around a military camp. The stain, the deviance from cleanliness, is
ontological to the non-masculine. In Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero, the voice of the dictator (Pinochet)
similarly mourns the poor masses that come to the valley to wet their backsides in the river (48). In Ramírez‟s
Margarita, está linda la mar, the conspirators plotting the assassination of Somoza are systematically stained by
ink and grease (148). The stain, or “mancha” that Melgar Bao observes, runs contrary to eugenic discourses of
modernity. The stained individual becomes an unwanted member of society, or within the paradigm of
patriarchy, an effeminate and castrated subject.
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come into existence, Mosse argues that an efficient system and hierarchy of countertypes
must first be constructed. He notes that the masculine stereotype is to be strengthened by “the
existence of a negative stereotype of men who not only failed to measure up to the ideal but
who in body and soul were its foil, projecting the exact opposite of true masculinity” (6). The
character of Marcos Burgos, Matilda‟s uncle, serves as the most stereotypic example in
Rivera Garza‟s examination of masculinity in the text. He is not the virile, sensual body that
Domínguez Ruvalcaba notes, but instead belongs to the new hegemony of knowledge and
science that subverts the traditional emphasis on physical power. This new ethos of science,
and by default its discursive elements, defines the strategies of modernization. Jorge
Ruffinelli notes how “los „científicos‟ formaban parte de los niveles sociales dominantes”
(35). Marcos demonstrates an avid interest in the project of modernization when he notes that
“si el régimen en verdad creía en el orden y el progreso, […] los médicos, y no los políticos,
tendrían que dictar estrictas legislaciones urbanas” (126). Roberts-Camps, however, using
Julia Kristeva‟s terminology, identifies Marcos Burgos as a character who is also abjected
from the nation due to his provincial heritage (84). I disagree with her evaluation, as we
observe how “Marcos desarrolló una fe ciega en las posibilidades abiertas del futuro, en el
progreso de la nación” (124). He becomes a symbol of knowledge-based hegemony. His
belonging is tied to an unabashed imitation of the stereotype, as “no sólo imitó [la] manera de
vestir [de sus maestros] sino que además pudo desarrollar la misma ingravidez de
movimientos y la mesura pacífica de sus miradas,” and that “todos olvidaron que era de
Veracruz y, de la misma manera, todos estuvieron de acuerdo en su brillante futuro” (125).
Marcos, though coming from the province, evidences the possibility of simulation and
performance of Masculinity as a successful strategy of becoming the stereotype.
62
The morphine-addicted, failed photographer Buitrago in particular plays the role of
the countertype to the scientific and modernizing stereotype. As a “sissy” in the economy of
masculinity, he is both subjugated and ontological to the hegemonic (Piedra 383). José Piedra
defines “the sissy” in gender relations amongst men as being a subject that is “„ultra‟
feminine, feminized, and/or [whose] effeminate behavior [is] perceived as passive, weak, and
forever ready to suit the bully‟s whims” (370). Other characters such as the psychiatrist
Eduardo Oligochea who treats Matilda, and Arturo Loayza, who is Buitrago‟s childhood
friend and now lawyer, pose middle grounds between the stereotype and the subordinate
masculinities that populate Rivera Garza‟s novel. They slip into the crevices or grey spaces
between the gender/subject positions of dominant and subordinate.
As an example, Eduardo Oligochea is a man who places an upmost importance on the
precision of science as “tanto en su escritorio como dentro de su cabeza los objetos y las
palabras se mueven con ritmos metódicos, siguiendo patrones rigurosos pero nimbados de
armonía” (103). These “patrones” suggest a connection to Marcos Burgos‟s rules of hygiene
and the imitation of his own “patrones”: the professors on which he modeled his behavior
and countenance on. Rivera Garza effectively contrasts his fixation on language and certainty
with the self-narrative of a patient, Roma Camarena. When asked by Oligochea about her
parents, she responds “¿mis padres? Las putas lo vuelven loco” (101). She sidesteps his
questioning and instead focuses on the philandering husband that she blames for her
condition. Eduardo‟s medical evaluation of the subject is of interest, as he notes that: “su
delirio era polimorfo, destacándose con más claridad la idea de que el marido la había hecho
guaje, y que ella, a su vez, lo había engañado para vengarse de él. Tenía un delirio de ideas
por asociación” (101). His evaluation concludes with “le quedó sólo el resentimiento hacia su
63
esposo al que no le perdona las faltas que según ella le ha cometido. Locura intermitente.
Violento celosa. Acceso maniaco. Libre e indigente” (102). We notice a precision of
language that contrasts sharply with Camarena‟s self-styled narrative. Furthermore, an
implicit doubt is placed on the woman, who by being interned in La Castañeda, is now an
unwanted societal element. Oligochea‟s official report places doubt on her husband‟s actions
but strongly asserts Camarena‟s transgressive actions of adultery that break the code of order
and hygiene. The novel further notes that “entre las palabras y el olor, él busca uniformidad,
exactitud. Un método científico. Una manera de explicar la vida del cerebro y la conducta de
los hombres basada en experimentos” (39). The novel, borrowing from Rivera Garza‟s
doctoral dissertation The Masters of the Streets: Bodies, Power and Modernity in Mexico,
1867-1930, specifies how in 1917, a small group of doctors gets together to (re)configure “ el
lenguaje de la psiquiatría” (104), so much so that now “la verborrea incomprensible de los
mayores de cincuenta años se convierte en demencia senil” (103).
Science becomes a hegemonic textual strategy defined by its economy of verbiage
and its descriptive accuracy, which in turn permits a discursive definition, separation, and
purification of the nation. Scientific discourse as a hegemonic text is contrasted with the
voice of poetry and poets. Eduardo affirms that though some “psiquiatras todavía son poetas,
hombres subyugados por las profundidades ignotas del alma” (39), he is instead what he
wants to be, “un profesional sin poesía” (39). Marcos Burgos adds his two cents when he
affirms that “los bohemios, como denominaban a los poetas, eran tan peligrosos como los
mismos pobres” (129); who were, and still are a societal element defined by the “stain” that
Melgar Bao affirms is contrary to the construct of a nation.
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This fixation on the word, both spoken and written, is specified in Oligochea‟s most
worrying dream, which is centered on “palabras equívocas” (105). These “wrong words” are
evoked by a relationship the doctor had in his youth with a young girl from provincial Jalapa,
Mercedes Flores, who after making love for the first time, tells him “I‟m your man […]
You‟re my woman, Eduardo” (105). Language becomes not only important in the discourse
of nation, as seen in Marcos Burgos, but is also primary in the construct of the self, a theme
seen in La cresta de Ilión.
Oligochea, furthermore, is completely dependent on the approval of the homosocial
mass in his self-justification as a mature member of society. Subjectivity is essential, and he
makes it most clear when he shows Joaquín a photo of his fiancée, who notes “la necesidad
de aprobación en los ojos de su confidente” (52). Eduardo does not gain subjectivity by
means of the scrotal sack like Vargas Llosa‟s males, but instead through homosocial
approbation, reminiscent of Eve Sedgwick‟s postulates of homoerotic desire. Sedgwick
describes the homosocial as “a word occasionally used in history and the social sciences,
where it describes social bonds between persons of the same sex; it is a neologism, obviously
formed by analogy with 'homosexual,' and just as obviously meant to be distinguished from
'homosexual‟” (1). The reference to homosexuality corroborates an application of the
countertype/stereotype model, as the term homosociality “is applied to such activities as
'male bonding,' which may, as in our society, be characterized by intense homophobia, fear
and hatred of homosexuality" (1). Continuing with Eduardo, his moment of castration,
though political and not physical, occurs when Buitrago sees that “de repente éste parece un
perro amaestrado o un mozalbete de apenas diecisiete años, ambos con el hocico abierto
como si aguardaran palmas en el lomo o regalos” (52). The climax, which is to say the
65
metaphorical flaccid penis or swallowing of the testicles, occurs when Buitrago chastises
Eduardo: “Vamos Eduardo. No te hagas pendejo. Esto ni siquiera es una mujer. Cecilia es tu
boleto para entrar por la puerta grande a la colonia Roma” (53). Rivera Garza dephallicizes
Oligochea through a sustained inquiry into relations of power amongst men, and not through
the manipulation of the male organ, that the author of Margarita, está linda la mar is guilty
of.
Rivera Garza foments a discursive space that dialogues not only with historic ideas of
Mexican masculinity (Mckee xxviii), but also with the writing of gender into a text that in its
historicity, implicates contemporary positions and constructs of identity. If Matilda Burgos is
to be read as an alternative identity position for the contemporary Mexican woman, then how
do the men like Joaquín Buitrago function in the dialectic between text and identity?
Rivera Garza creates a market dynamic of competing yet variant masculinities that
uphold a singular structure of power that is Connell‟s hegemonic masculinity. Eduardo
Oligochea, as an example, does not conform to the definitions and expectations of the
homosocial, and belongs instead to what Connell terms “complicit” masculinity. She
theorizes that complicit masculinities are “constructed in ways that realize the patriarchal
dividend, without the tensions or risks of being the frontline of troops of patriarchy” (79).
Connell further notes that by sheer numbers, complicit masculinity is the most pervasive
category she observes in Western culture. Complicit masculinities furthermore “often involve
extensive compromises with women rather than naked domination or an uncontested display
of authority” (79). Men in this group are complicit with the hegemonic project.
They are neither Mosse‟s stereotype nor countertype, instead existing in a crevice
between the two terms. They sustain hegemonic masculinity through their pervasive and
66
unrelenting adulation of the political phallus. Rivera Garza does not displace the focus of
power from the corporal penis to the testicles, but instead creates a market of masculinities
where men are commoditized as types. Oligochea for example, belongs to the stereotype in
his stubborn yet consistent adherence to the language of science, but falls from hegemony, as
he cannot gain the approbation of a drug-addict photographer who for the first time, “le habla
de tú” (53). Eduardo‟s slippage, both into the crack between stereotype and countertype, and
into actions that run against law and order, is punctuated by an encounter with a young drugaddict from a seemingly wealthy background who asserts that “todo el mundo rompe las
reglas, doctor, todo el mundo” (97). The speaker belongs to a demographic who:
Son, por lo regular, aunque no todos, oficinistas, farmacéuticos, estudiantes de leyes o
de medicina. Gente como él. Gente a la que puede ver a los ojos sin conmiseración.
Hombres jóvenes de traje, corbata y sombrero de fieltro que llegan de la mano de sus
padres o sus tutores, con el afán de verlos curados del vicio y el cinismo de las
drogas. (98)
The youth (like Eduardo) who belongs to the hegemonic class, asserts that though his father
(like Marcos Burgos) “cree que el país está destinado a encontrar su propia grandeza” (99),
he does not share the same hope. This disenchantment with the national rhetoric of modernity
and progress is made complicit with a usage of drugs as a means of escape, an approach that
is in stark discord with the strategies of the hegemonic dictator Marcos Burgos . The theme
of drugs and the subsequent escape from reality brings to the fore Joaquín Buitrago who is
the opening narrative element in Nadie me verá llorar.
Buitrago at first has the potential of being the stereotype of masculinity as he not only
comes from a wealthy family but is also blessed with good looks and education. In his youth,
he potentially could have subscribed to both discursive and aesthetic hegemonies of
masculinity. Unlike the drugged youth who confronts Eduardo, Joaquín shows no semblance
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of belonging to the modernization project. He shows first signs of breaking with this rhetoric
when, in an almost vampiric state, he observes “la luz de su propia figura en los aparadores.
Lo hace con duda, volviendo ligeramente el rostro a la derecha y luego a la izquierda, como
si temiera que algún transeúnte se burlara de él” (24). As an insomniac, Buitrago is also
located outside the culture of work and order specified by Marcos Burgos, as he goes to bed
just as “los demás despiertan y la ciudad vuelve a juntarse en su nudo de ruido y velocidad”
(14). He shows a precocious fixation on subjectivity like Eduardo, but makes no attempts at
reconciliation with the homosocial as he lacks his own Cecilia. Joaquín also evidences a
break from the linguistic economy of Oligochea; when the latter questions the former who
“rara vez tiene respuestas inmediatas o lineales” (33). Furthermore, “hablar, para Joaquín, es
desvariar. Confunde el tiempo de los verbos y los pronombres” (33). The fall from both
norms of work and language place Joaquín in what Connell calls the category of subordinate
masculinities, which unlike the complicit varieties, are countertypes to the stereotype.
Rivera Garza places Buitrago in a central dialectic that frames the novel, marked by
the question of “¿cómo se convierte uno en fotógrafo de putas?” (19, 186). His profession, at
first glance, adheres to the hegemonic norms of hygiene and order as photographers were
hired by state institutions to photograph and document prostitutes and patients in mental
institutions (Irwin 75). Buitrago, however, comes to focus on elements of the photographed
subject that go beyond simple scientific documentation. He notes how the prostitutes he
photographs “hacía[n] esfuerzos entre risibles y sinceros por imitar las poses de languidez o
de provocación de las divas” (19). Though the man controls the gaze of the photographic
apparatus, the subject in Buitrago‟s photography is the woman, or object of the photograph,
as women exist as independent subjects in the photo. They are conscious of their own
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movements and are given free rein in the composition of the photo. They become subjects
when the lens becomes a mirroring surface onto which they model the poses and expressions
of vedettes and Hollywood actresses. Buitrago becomes nothing more than a body holding a
camera; a finger pressing a shutter. Joaquín is therefore deobjectified, and becomes a portal
by which the objects of his photography gain their own subjectivity, seeing the lens as a
mirror. He aims to capture “el lugar en que una mujer se acepta a sí misma. Allí la seducción
no iba hacia afuera ni era unidireccional; allí, en un gesto indivisible y único, la seducción no
era un anzuelo sino un mapa” (19). This space, or perhaps surface, where the woman comes
to terms with herself, recounts a Lacanian mirror stage where the subject engages in a
Hegelian dialectic with the image in the mirror (lens). Joaquín is further convinced that it is
possible to reach that place (19). Psychoanalysis holds the opposite to be true, which in turn
leads to the futility of Buitrago‟s aesthetic project.
This futility is further evidenced in his interactions with other members of the
photographic homosocial. One member comments upon seeing Joaquin‟s portfolio, “¿esto es
lo que fuiste a aprender en Roma, flaco? Esto es un trabajo muy menor” (23). Aside from
belittling his art, the speaker also aesthetically countertypes Buitrago, separating him from
the virile and sensual male body that Domínguez Ruvalcaba notes in early 20th-century
Mexican visual and textual culture. Even amongst the complicit group of photographers,
Buitrago embodies a subordinate group, a countertype that serves as the antithesis of what
man (or the photographer) should be within the project of modernity.
Aside from not belonging to the homosocial mass, or from participating in the
linguistic economy of modernity and science, Buitrago shares with the reader a fatalistic
outlook on the future that cannot be reconciled with Marcos Burgos‟s ideas of progress. He is
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marked by Alberta, whom he met while studying in Rome. He breaks off a relationship with
her, but she mails him pornographic snapshots of herself in the arms of other men, after being
declared dead. He succinctly divides his life: “una mujer: Alberta. Roma, que había partido
su vida en dos: antes y después. Antes Alberta y después la morfina” (16). National
discourses of the future do not fit into this paradigm of failure and obsession, but drugs as an
escape, figure heavily into his existence.
Instead of populating the novel with a random spattering of men, Rivera Garza
establishes a system of comparisons among the male characters in Nadie me verá llorar by
means of ontological equivalencies that later fragment into the multiplicities of men in
society. Buitrago is tied to Oligochea by working within the world of science, but differs
from the latter as his narrative voice is far-removed from the structural and lexical precision
of the psychiatrist. Oligochea is similarly connected to Marcos Burgos as both subscribe to
the linguistic economy of science. Buitrago is similarly associated with the lawyer Arturo
Loayza, who shared a common childhood.
Both characters were born into wealth and educated; their parents were also friends.
Joaquín demonstrates a calculated adherence to Loayza‟s belonging to the hegemonic
discourse, modifying his speech to mimic the hegemonic voice of order (as the newly arrived
Marcos Burgos once did in copying his “patrones”) as “cada una de sus frases contiene al
final un punto y aparte. Un Nuevo párrafo” (217). Buitrago dialogues with Arturo to secure
the patrimony left by his parents. While Arturo by day is the stereotype of the wealthy,
progressive, and articulate Mexican man, he shows a slippage into the crevice between
stereotype and countertype in the company of Buitrago. The text observes how “los dos se
observan con una delicadeza casi femenina, un cuidado que sólo están acostumbrados a
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practicar frente a las mujeres” (235). Loayza, in Buitrago‟s house, seems to break with one of
the tenets of the homosocial, which is to say the lack of expressing homoerotic. This
feminization of the lawyer stresses Rivera Garza‟s project of questioning the male stereotype,
without necessarily mounting an oppositional countertype: Arturo, much like Eduardo, is
never discredited from the discursive and professional spaces of science and law.
Connell‟s strategies of hegemonic masculinity include in addition to science and law,
both sources of objectivism, the role of the press in society. Rivera Garza displaces print
culture to the realm of the individual, just as she does with the creation of a market of
individual masculinities that compete and collaborate in the construct of the nation. The
character of Matilda Burgos is juxtaposed intertextually with the protagonist of Santa, as
Matilda reads the novel while working amongst other prostitutes in a brothel. She comments
“sólo las muy atolondradas o francamente estúpidas, como Santa, acudían al registro y
pasaban por la humillación del examen médico” (162). Matilda carves out a textual niche
characterized by a transgression of this literary norm that does subscribe to patriarchal norms
and regulations of economy and hygiene. Here we note again the importance placed on
cleanliness. But the literary model in Nadie me verá llorar, much like the model of
masculinity, is not without countervoices. Ligia, Matilda‟s theatrical and romantic partner,
follows a Quijotesque reading of Santa when she imitates the literary character and finds
herself a man who rescues her from the brothel. She comments that “es el sueño de toda
puta, ¿no? Tú deberías hacer lo mismo. La Modernidad no va a durar toda la vida” (185). By
implication, La Modernidad allows for independent women and the transgression of social
constructs and regulations.
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Gender roles and models within the literary texts interlaced with Nadie me verá llorar
are not only geared towards the female characters. Men also have a literary tradition of
behavior, of performance shall we say, that designates their position within, in complicity
with, or outside patriarchy. In the novels Matilda reads in the house of her uncle‟s friend
Columba, she notes that “los héroes son siempre hombres [que] [á]giles de mente y cuerpo,
logran vencer todos los obstáculos para rescatar a las heroínas en el último momento” (140).
If men are to be men, like the young revolutionary Cástulo Rodríguez who initiates her into
the world outside the sanitized confines of her uncle‟s house, then they too must in some way
or fashion dialogue with these literary models. Following with the effects of the literary in
both the discursive space and outside it, Jorge Ruffinelli notes an acute sensibility for
language and the epistemological paradigms it opens up in Rivera Garza‟s textual
production. He surmises that “Rivera Garza estudia en su ensayo los lenguajes, y en su
novela crea un lenguaje a la vez que explora (a través de sus personajes) el lenguaje.
Estamos, al fin, en el centro de lo literario” (38). The literary and language provide a model
and a playground for identity experimentation and expression, whether it be following the
hegemonic system or transgressing it.
The Mexican writer displaces the dictator from the national to the domestic, and
emphasizes the role of the hegemonic on more intimate and interpersonal relationships. The
exploration of masculinity is structured around countertypes vis-à-vis the domineering
stereotype of the domestic dictator, Marcos Burgos. Unlike the Nicaraguan Poet/Politician,
she does not hold political aspirations but instead dedicates her work on the one hand to an
exploration of legal codes of sanity and the institutionalization of the mentally infirm, and on
the other to the role of writing and literature in contemporary Mexican society. In latter
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works such as La cresta de Ilión (2002) and Ningún reloj cuenta esto (2002), Rivera Garza
liberates her texts from the historicized discursive space, and instead focuses on the usage of
language to explore the phallic positionings of patriarchy. Patriarchy is not embodied in the
figure of the dictator, but in something else. In La cresta de Ilión for example, the anxiety
experienced by the unnamed protagonist is a gender-anxiety that is rooted in something other
than the social constructs of history and institutions.
In comparison to Sergio Ramírez‟s work, Nadie me verá llorar is divorced from
contemporary Mexican politics, but inculcates an economy of masculinities reminiscent of
free market Mexico with its evident positioning of stereotype versus countertypes, and the
reconciliation of complicit masculinities with the hegemonic domestic caudillo. Returning
for a moment to Rubin‟s thesis on the commodification of women, it is evident from a
structural reading of Nadie me verá llorar and Margarita, está linda la mar that these writers
commodify male bodies within an economy of masculinity. The Mexican author alludes to
the second entry of the verb invertir, as she creates a market of masculinities that are played
off against each other with the end game of providing a dominant model that colonizes and
defines the market dynamics of gender in her text.
Undercover Marketing: Politics and Masculinities in La fiesta del Chivo.
Keeping with this economic concept of gender, Mario Vargas Llosa pens a muchstudied caudillo novel that explores the role of masculinity within a the authoritarian market
of Rafael Trujillo‟s Dominican Republic. Published a year after Matilda Burgos‟s incursion
into the literary, La fiesta del Chivo creates a renewed interest in the genre of the dictator
73
novel. Polit Dueñas‟s book is a prime example in this trend, as the critic includes a chapter
on Vargas Llosa‟s novel (2002).
What interests me, as a critic, is how Vargas Llosa pens the hegemonic or patriarchal
aspects of masculinity in relation to society in a discursively complex and varied style, and
how masculinity vis-à-vis subjectivity is construed and constructed. As Pons notes, the past
in La fiesta del Chivo “no es un tiempo fijo y concluido, sino cambiante que se conecta con
un presente también cambiante, inacabado, en su contemporaneidad inconclusa” (262). The
author has often cited “demons” as being the basis of any writing, and as Sabine Köllman has
noted, “politics is one of the most persistent „demons‟ which [...] provoke his creativity”
(1).23 Keeping with the idea of an economy of masculinities, I argue that Vargas Llosa writes
masculinities into a critique of authoritarian government that controls both economic and
social markets. The novel, as we know, unfolds through the return of Urania Cabral, daughter
of a one-time confidant of the sanitized and DonJuanesque dictator, Rafael Trujillo, to the
island of her birth. She cannot explain her return and her need to talk to her father; a father
who consented to her rape to regain favor with Trujillo. In this sense, as has been noted by
Lady Rojas-Trempe, the novel appears to be structured around the implicit and explicit
violence towards women, and the fear engendered by a patriarchal society that not only
commodifies, but that actively barters with the female body. Following this argumentation,
Miguel Gabriel Ochoa Santos posits that the corporal body, and in particular the female
body, is a discursive site of oppression and transgression (214). The critic, however, does not
pay attention to the male bodies that are routinely and methodically violated.
23
Vargas Llosa‟s own thoughts on writing and being a novelist, including the presence of inner demons, can be
found in Cartas a un joven novelista (México, D.F.: Ariel/Planeta, 1997).
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Much has been said about the historiographic and metaliterary aspects of the novel,
with even a former Spanish head of state claiming that the novel is “más verdad que la
verdad” (Lefere, “La fiesta” 331) in regards to what happened in the Dominican Republic
during Trujillo‟s government. While this may be up for debate, the idiosyncrasies of the text
reveal a dialogic that goes further than a conversation between terms such as “history” and
“truth.” Though the violence against women, which is to say the digital penetration of the
young girl performed by the impotent dictator, may provide a silenced aspect of state
repression and control, I argue that it simply presents an anachronistic context that permits
the narrative voice of the dictator and Dominican society during the years of the Trujillato to
be uttered.
In a thoroughly researched study, Nicasio Urbina explores the connection between
violence(s) and structure in Margarita, está linda la mar. The critic underlines the violence
perpetuated by the caudillo figure as a structuralizing frame in the text, focusing on the
desubjectication of those surrounding Somoza (365). Similarly, Vargas Llosa‟s novel is
punctuated with violence in both textual and linguistic terms. Though writing about the
Dominican Republic, the author shies away from using the dialect and lexicon of the island
and his characters – all from diverse social and economic classes – speak in a standard Latin
American Spanish. Vargas Llosa further writes violence into (and not by means of) the text
with the use of temporal jumps between the narrative of Urania and the events of her youth.
When she first talks to her invalid father, her voice intermingles with a separate narrative of
the past. Mention is made in an impersonal point of view, to a celebration in Santo Domingo
immediately after Urania addresses her father. Within the impersonal recounting of the
celebration Urania speaks, correcting the narration (or herself?), noting that the name of the
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city was changed to “Ciudad Trujillo” (133) during the dictator‟s regime. This detail adds to
the characterization of the dictator‟s hyper masculinity, if this hegemonic masculinity can be
viewed as being synonymous with the Foucauldian concept of power.24 By genderizing the
city as a metonymic representation of the oppressive male figure, the politics of the nation
are circumscribed in relation to the centrality of the city versus peripheral towns, villages and
regions. Later on, Urania‟s first meeting with Ramfis Trujillo is told in the same impersonal
style, complete with dialogue that is not part of her diegesis. Thus, the story within the story
appears as the author creates a separate narrative space, characterized by a change in
narrative voice, one that runs simultaneous and coherent with Urania‟s return to the
Republic.
As critics have underlined, the novel can indeed be framed by her contemporary
situation, which in turn compels the narrative of the past to be a traumatic text (Caruth 24,
LaCapra 48). On the other hand, the violence of fear and assault against the female body is
actually quite secondary in terms of violence exerted in the text. Men, in fact, are as much (or
even more) victimized by the regime of fear and violence in Vargas Llosa‟s dictatorship. The
revenge vetted out by Ramfis after the murder of his father is brutal and visceral as he
assumes the position of hegemonic masculinity, yet lacks the suspense and textual detective
work on the part of the reader, which is characteristic of the rape of Urania. The torture of
24
I am referring to the thinker‟s conceptions of power as outlined in his work in The History of Sexuality (New
York: Vintage Books, 1990). More specifically, “power must be understood in the first instance as the
multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own
organization: as the process which, through ceaseless struggle and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or
even reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a
system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly,
as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in
the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies […] Power is everywhere not
because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere […]is not an institution, and not a
structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex
strategical situation in a particular society.” (92-3).
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Román Fernández, for example, is written without the aid of extended metaphors or
symbolisms. His eyelids are sewn shut, he is periodically electrocuted, and is even castrated
in graphic detail: his testicles are snipped off with a pair of scissors, and he is then made to
swallow them (431). The castration of the male subject vis-à-vis the exertion of phallic
power by Ramfis, underlines the author‟s position of writing the dictator. Though careful in
deconstructing the sanitized and erect figure by mentioning the dictator‟s incontinence and
impotence, Vargas Llosa resists completely doing away with the hyper masculine subject
position within Dominican society, perhaps reflective, on the one hand, of his own political
assertion in his native Peru, and on the other, of Judith Payne‟s thesis of Boom writers
continuing to enshrine the tenets of patriarchy in their exercises of representation (7).
The violence exerted against men by men, however, is central to the author‟s
Trujillato. It is axiomatic of the diegesis, where paradoxically what is not tolerated is the
violence against women. Antonio Imbert, one of the conspirators in the plot against the
dictator, is agitated by the famous murder of the Mirabal sisters, commenting that “¡Ahora
también se asesinaba a mujeres indefensas, sin que nadie hiciera nada!” and that “¡Ya no
había huevos en este país, coño!” (319). Having “huevos,” it seems, implies that one does not
kill women, yet testicles are primal to the definition of the male subject in the text. Returning
to the torture scenes of Román, he hears (since he has had his eyelids shut) “risitas
sobreexcitadas y comentarios obscenos, de unos sujetos que eran sólo voces y olores
picantes” (431). By being castrated, Román loses subjectivity in the face of these mocking
“sujetos,” effectively losing position in the dialectic amongst males. Román is deconstructed
by the agents of the dictator‟s successor as Ramfis exerts a phallic masculinity that
interestingly asserts its position by dephallicizing, in the organic sense, its competitors.
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Men in La fiesta del Chivo are the main players in the text, even though the text is
“framed” by Urania‟s trauma. By giving the fictional Trujillo a voice, the author narrativizes
hegemonic masculinity. This concept, as penned by a very hegemonic writer, is epitomized
by the virile, clean-cut and non-perspiring dictator figure who engages in a process that
feminizes men “cuyos cuerpos no corresponden al estereotipo de la masculinidad
hegemónica. Hombres que expresan sus emociones, artistas, de contextura debil, enfermizos,
entre otros, tenderian a ser feminizados” (Olavarría 120). Trujillo survives in a culture and
homosocial body of men that are complicit with his strategies of domination. Their
complicity is marked by a silence that is omniscient, as one of the conspirators notes: “en
esos años, Antonio no se hubiera atrevido a hablar mal de Trujillo” (111). When the younger
Urania spies the dictator visiting their neighbor‟s house, her father chides her and stresses
that she did not see anything. Note here that the silence enforced by the dictatorship is more
than discursive, as Urania is not told to remain silent and not tell anybody about what she
saw. This option would require a textual, albeit silent, acknowledgement of the action
observed. Her father, however, pushes for an erasure of the action in itself, disenabling
language as signifier of the violence and strategies of the hegemonic character.
What is aptly and often used as a signifier of masculinity is the dismembered but allpowerful scrotal sac that houses the essence of man. It is not surprising that Trujillo‟s demise
is precipitated by an uncooperative penis and a urethral sphincter that has a mind of its own.
Emblematic of the importance of the testicles within the homosocial, Trujillo never loses his
position within the hierarchy of power in the novel. Only Urania knows of his impotence,
and only his trusted manservant knows of his incontinence. Even after being ambushed, he
does not lose his stature as the stereotype of masculinity, as the General Fernández
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mentioned earlier fears reprisals and revenge if he were to take hold of the system. Trujillo
only loses prestige and dominance in the text, in the discursive interior of the subject that
Vargas Llosa pens, which is to say within the textual signifiers of the novel. Only through
Vargas Llosa‟s imagination of the man can the text undermine his position, underscoring the
author‟s own political situation. What is to note, however, is the importance of the male
bodies and their testes in Vargas Llosa‟s work. The economy of masculinity is therefore
ontoformative to the erotics and poetics of a text that both subscribes to a phallogocentric
diegesis and circumscribes a phallocentric society.25 Vargas Llosa seems to suggest that
Dominican (and implicitly Peruvian) society can examine the past in relation to the present
through the optic of a masculine discursive space.
After having lost political elections to Alberto Fujimori and suffering a phase of selfimposed disenchantment with his native Peru, Vargas Llosa‟s rewriting of the dictator figure
is poignant in its extrapolation of national, which is to say Dominican, politics to a
transnational poetics of trauma. By structuring the novel around Urania‟s migration from the
cosmopolitan city of the United Nations to the island of her ancestors, the author suggests a
converse relationship between the dictator‟s masculinity, actions, and strategies of power
towards other social contexts. We must remember that Vargas Llosa first demystifies the
dictator, only to later re-strengthen the position of the hyper masculine by dephallicizing, in
the psychoanalytic and physical sense, challengers to Trujillo and his offspring. This
exercise, in turn, suggests that under an autocratic regime of violence, history is bound to
repeat itself and those who suffer are the silenced and raped subjects that enable the dictator.
The author‟s gendered and masculine discursive space is reflective of his own position as an
25
By phallocentric I refer to the privileging of the masculine and the male in the understanding and evaluation
of meaning and/or social relations and structures.
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outcast politician seeking to reestablish his own political agency against the machinations of
his rival Alberto Fujimori who suffered political defeat in the year of the novel‟s first edition.
The connections between the literary and the social have been addressed by Vargas Llosa, as
he notes that “Fujimori was quite different to Trujillo – a more mediocre tyrant” (Jaggi 31).
The author‟s position within the commerce of literature is strengthened by an exploration of
masculinities vis-à-vis the transgression of the hegemonic that surreptitiously introduces
Vargas Llosa‟s own personal position within Peruvian politics.
Following this train of thought, Andrew Foley has systematically analyzed the
development of the author‟s fiscal views in his narrative. Beginning with his early work that
is harshly opposed to authoritarianism and a growing disenchantment with socialism (3), the
author reaches a breaking point with other writers of his generation when he publicly
denounces Castro‟s Cuba. Upon his return to Lima in 1974, the author shows an increasing
concern with extremism both on the Left and the Right. The author is above all else a
classical liberal (Foley 5) who upholds ideas of the free market, and is not a neoliberal that
Ramírez seeks to disenfranchise. La fiesta del Chivo is, therefore, a critique of authoritarian
economics. The author writes this critique through an inscription of gender onto the
dynamics of violence and silence that demarcates the narrative.
The narrative as a construct of language genderizes the extra-textual economic and
political paradigms. Vargas Llosa‟s narrative is painstaking in its research and inclusion of
national economic policy, as the dictator is shown with his aides discussing the country‟s
state of affairs. Faced with low revenues, Trujillo refuses to reduce his workforce or to cut
costs as to do so would cause social tumult and unemployment (155). One alternative
suggested is to nationalize the dictator‟s industries, thereby shifting the weight of ledger
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books in the red to the State, a move which Vargas Llosa‟s Trujillo is stoutly against.
Speaking to a group of senators, he observes, “robarías cuanto pudieras si el trabajo que
haces para la familia Trujillo, lo hicieras para los Vicini, los Valdez o los Armentero. Y
todavía mucho más si las empresas fueran del Estado. Allí sí que te llenarías los bolsillos”
(157). Most importantly, the dictator in the novel, which is to say the embodiment of
hegemonic masculinity, creates a market system based on his own position as the dominator,
where subordinate positions are understood and commodified by “su conocimiento profundo
de la psicología dominicana” (169). This understanding constitutes “trabar una relación de
compadrazgo con un campesino, con un obrero, con un artesano, con un comerciante,” which
results in “la lealtad de ese pobre hombre” (169).
In another example of the connection between the dictator‟s body and national policy,
Trujillo‟s virility and phallic masculinity are contrasted with Venezuela‟s democratically
elected Rómulo Betancourt, who is described by an announcer in the dictator‟s Radio Caribe.
The announcer, “poniendo la voz que correspondía para hablar de un maricón, afirmaba que,
además de hambrear al pueblo venezolano, el Presidente Rómulo Betancourt había traído la
sal a Venezuela” (35). We must remember that Betancourt not only nationalized Venezuela‟s
oil industry, against the precepts of a free market neoliberal system, but also held a
longstanding rift with Trujillo that resulted in assassination attempts against both rulers. As
Trujillo reflects after taking a bath and putting on talcum powder and deodorant, “el
mariconazo ese no se saldría con la suya. Consiguió que la OEA le impusiera las sanciones,
pero ganaba el que reía último” (35). The supposed homosexuality of Betancourt, and the
purported penetration that accompanies the condition, are juxtaposed with the clean, hygienic
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body of a man who promises to “ha[cer] chillar a una hembrita como hace veinte años,”
when his “testículos entraban en ebullición y su verga empezaba a enderezarse” (236).
Returning once more to Jameson‟s observation of the politico-economic climate of
Latin America in the latter half of the 20th century, and Rubin‟s notions of commodification
and gender, I suggest after my analysis of Ramírez, Rivera Garza, and Vargas Llosa‟s work
that these fin-du-siècle caudillo novels engage in a materialization of the male body that
inverts the traditionally held view that it is only the female that is commoditized. I argue that
the male body and its manifestations are materialized as units of commerce that disassociate
men from the Masculine. They connect with social and political institutions through an
engagement with economic models, as they write masculinities into their narratives to
characterize, organize, and place their own authorial thought. In the work of Sergio Ramírez
and Mario Vargas Llosa, the testicles not only house the economic productivity of a market
system of masculinities, but also subjectify the male within the homosocial. Though capital
loses its materiality in a climate of liberalization, masculinity becomes a commodity as it is
written onto the testicles.
Bodies that Matter: Queer(ing) Masculinities and the Fall of the Dictator
In keeping with this matrix that interrelates gender, politics and economics, Pedro
Lemebel imagines the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Lemebel‟s narrative is not
structured around a wayward prodigal son or a traumatized victim. In its place, he probes a
failed communist plot to assassinate the dictator in 1986. Instead of focusing the narrative on
an intimate voice within the rebels, he pens a neighborhood transvestite, La Loca, who not
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only falls in love with Carlos, a young revolutionary, but whose house becomes the
functional center for the group as they store their weapons and propaganda in camouflaged
boxes. Tengo miedo torero, the author‟s first novel, follows the themes of his previous three
collections of chronicles, in the sense that it “redraws the map of Santiago from its margins,
revealing and redefining sites and subjects that have been neglected by both high culture and
the communication media” (Palaversich 99). I have placed this novel at the end of this
chapter for two reasons. Firstly, it is chronologically the last of the four new historical novels
to be published, implying in part that it has the benefit of having been potentially exposed to
the other works in its own poiesis. Secondly, discussing the novel as a Queer work or as a
queering work requires a point of reference or comparison. Following David Halperin‟s idea
that the term and the verb circumscribe “not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the
normative” (62). Therefore in discussing Tengo miedo torero, my analysis reverts at times to
a comparative model that conjures a point or position (or novel) that is normative. The
inclusion of Lemebel‟s work does not serve as a parenthesis within this chapter, but instead
serves to illustrate how masculinity and the representation of it is a pluralistic identity and
process.
Lemebel‟s novel fits into current trends in Chilean literature that are characterized by
a proliferation of the new historical novel by a diverse set of authors from multiple
movements and generations, from Alberto Blest Gana‟s 19th-century stories and 20th-century
authors such as Carlos Droguett, to the more recent Antonio Gil and Francisco Simón or
Fernando Jerez. Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero sneaks into this trajectory of the genre by its
inclusion of the events leading up to the assassination attempt on Pinochet. But unlike
previous Chilean authors, Lemebel is the first to write the dictator from a Queer perspective.
83
Unlike Vargas Llosa‟s politically charged extrapolation, Lemebel‟s writing of the dictator
occurs at a time of relative political stability. The novel coincides with the presidency of
Ricardo Lagos Escobar, who oversaw the democratization of the Constitution and the
elimination of Pinochet-era oligarchic cronyism. Lemebel‟s Pinochet therefore lacks some of
the metonymic qualities of Vargas Llosa‟s Trujillo, as Chile undergoes a process of
liberalization in the early 2000s that is unlike the politics of Fujimori in Peru. Conversely,
Chile under Lagos Escobar does not suffer from the Fujishock of the early 1990s, or from the
delegitimizing effects of the Fujigolpe, a self-coup d‟état that destabilized national politics
into an autocratic regime very much like that Vargas Llosa opposes in La fiesta del Chivo.26
Chilean society in the early 2000s, instead, is punctuated by a series of social advances that
point towards a just and more democratic society, though the government did contend with
charges of corruption. More importantly, Lemebel writes at a time when the presidency
enjoys historic approval ratings, which is reflected in his tongue in cheek depiction of a
henpecked Pinochet.
Returning to the novel at hand, the band of communist rebels represents a masculinity
that is not necessarily complicit with the dictator. They are neither high-ranking generals nor
are they close aides to Pinochet. Lemebel‟s communist rebels do not adhere to the same
strategies of political domination or economic constructs forwarded by the hegemonic voice.
They instead queery traditional, patriarchal systems of gender and identity, subscribing to
what Connell deems “subordinate” masculinities (78). Subordinate masculinity in relation to
26
The connections between Tengo miedo torero and La fiesta del Chivo are various. Society is portrayed in
crisis, undergoing a moment of flux where a gubernatorial paradigm shift may or may not occur. Lemebel‟s
novel, however, is politically distanced from the present, unlike Vargas Llosa‟s narrative which flows from a
poetics of allegory, as his Trujillo is reflective of a certain other Peruvian autocrat. The writer, however, evades
ambiguity in his recent Travesuras, where the voyeuristic, sadistic, and Japanese Fukuda eviscerates the female
body. As Oswaldo Estrada has noted, Fukuda undoubtedly is representative of the japonés who controlled
Peruvian politics for over a decade (171).
84
hegemonic masculinity can be viewed as the Hegelian slave to the master. Connell borrows
Gramsci‟s usage of the term hegemony, as it inculcates “specific gender relations of
dominance and subordination between groups of men” (78). In modern Western society, the
most visible case of this relationship is seen in the dominance of heterosexual men and the
subordination of homosexual or Queer men. As Connell notes, “this is much more than a
cultural stigmatization of homosexuality or gay identity” and that “gay men are subordinated
to straight men by an array of quite material practices” (78). The communist rebels are
subordinate on two levels. On the one hand, their aim as a group is to topple the patriarch and
to establish a (theoretically) non-hierarchical social structure. Strategies of subverting and
oppressing women and other men would in theory not apply. On the other hand, they are also
more accepting of the subordinate male par excellence – the homosexual. After the plot fails,
they transport La Loca to where Carlos is hiding, showing some tolerance of alternative
sexual practices and expressions.
In their romance, which carries the narrative more so than the political machinations
of the rebels, La Loca del Frente‟s communist lover Carlos is highly sensualised in the text
through the furtive and at times explicit glances, comments and touches of the Queer figure.
She throws him a birthday party complete with cake, children, music and a fine tablecloth,
only to later offer him some liquor in an adult celebration once the neighborhood children
have left. Carlos is sensualized in the text when La Loca notes that he extends “sus labios en
una sonrisa perlada de licor” (101).27 His lips become a point of seduction as she asks him to
27
José Quiroga provides an equally demythifying anecdote about the quintessential communist rebel, Ernesto
“Che” Guevara in an essay on Virgilio Piñera. He recounts how when Guevara “saw a volume of Virgilio
Piñera‟s Teatro completo in the Cuban embassy, he hurled it against a wall: „How dare you have in our embassy
a book by this foul faggot!‟ he shouted” (168). Quiroga explains that this anger “testifies that Piñera has already
sexualized the revolutionary hero, he has turned him into a representation, has furnished that representation with
a (homo)erotic‟s” (177). I argue that Lemebel has not only sexualized the hero, but has also made him a subject
within the homoerotics of politics.
85
tell him/her something important about his life, a secret, though she does not want to know
everything, as he must remain an enigma. He tells her about a close friend he had in his
youth, growing up poor in the country. Naked and by a reservoir, Carlos and the friend start
rubbing their penises against the warm sand. Overcome by an uncontrollable urge, Carlos
recounts how “de un salto lo monté,” and that he asks him “que me dejara ponerle la puntita,
la pura puntita” (103). What follows is a standoff between the young communist and his
friend, with both boys stroking their adolescent genitals and neither one willing to be the
maricón. Reminiscent of a duel, the boys charge the other to bend over, until Carlos‟s friend
ejaculates without warning on his leg. The semen stain on his leg angers Carlos and becomes
a source of, until now, unspeakable shame. The image of the sensual, virile communist rebel
is further sexualized when La Loca returns from getting him a blanket to spend the night in
her house. She notes how:
Una de sus piernas se estiraba en el arqueo leve del reposo, y la otra colgando del
diván, ofrecía el epicentro abultado de su paquetón tenso por el brillo del cierre eclair
a medio abrir, a medio descorrer en ese ojal ribeteado por los dientes de bronce del
marrueco, donde se podía ver la pretina elástica de un calzoncillo coronado por los
rizos negros de la pendejada varonil. (105)
The teeth of the zipper opening to his genitalia serve as the next step in the sensualization of
Carlos, following the description of his pearly lips. Lemebel‟s queering of the communist
rebel is oral and centered on the mouth, in both physiological and textual terms. I will
contrast this later with the queering of the most patriarchal figure in the novel. Returning to
Carlos, the text sensualizes the macho figure, and in a conscious step takes a moment of
pause to contemplate the subverted, virile phallus. La Loca “tuvo que sentarse ahogada por el
éxtasis de la escena, tuvo que tomar aire para no sucumbir al vacío del desmayo frente a esta
estética erotizada por la embriaguez” (105). Lemebel‟s self-conscious usurpation of
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patriarchy is deliberate and focused, as though not only La Loca but also the text and the
reader need a moment of pause. Though Carlos is allowed to be a macho and to continue his
anti-Pinochet activities, he cannot escape the queer pen that eroticizes him.
This queer pen goes further than simply eroticizing the macho male under the queer
gaze; Carlos as subject undergoes a gender-morphing game of metaphorical transvestitism.
Sprawled on the couch with his crotch open to La Loca‟s gaze, he is first described as a “puta
de puerto” with “tetillas quiltras” (106). The feminized body then becomes “un dios indio
[…] un guerrero soñador” and finally “un macho etrusco” (106). Lemebel indicates not only
how gender is transitory, from female to male within the same gaze, but also how it is
culturally coded. Carlos‟s body is the gendered body that Judith Butler envisions in Gender
Trouble. It is discursive, relational, and societal. The body as surface is written upon by the
pen and gaze of La(s) Loca(s).28
After fellating Carlos, La Loca notes how he lays unconscious to her oral pleasuring,
in a pose “de Cristo desarticulado por el remolino etílico del pisco” (109). Lemebel‟s
juxtaposition of the male archetypes demonstrates a deftly crafted deconstruction of the
patriarchal voice, showing even the atheist communist can become a Christ-like figure – after
being fellated by a transvestite, of course. Lemebel de-phallicizes Carlos‟s model of
patriarchy not only by re-aestheticizing the macho body, but by also giving the “sissy” a
voice within the national context of overthrowing a dictator. As José Piedra has noted, “in
terms of sexual prowess, the sissy comes into his or her own by embracing, coupling, and
strangling, and ultimately by merely provoking a symbiotic relationship with an obliging
bully” (383).
12
The author himself never shied away from the public spotlight and frequently dressed in drag. The
photograph in the sleeve of the edition used shows Lemebel wearing a dress, his long hair collected in a
disheveled ponytail, his eyebrows carefully manicured, and his face made up with rouge.
87
Lemebel‟s queering of the communist Carlos is called into being by the portrayal of a
“guagua-boa, que al salir de la bolsa se soltó como un látigo,” that exhibits “la robustez de un
trofeo de guerra, un grueso dedo sin uña que pedía a gritos una boca que anillara su
amoratado glande” (107).29 The mouth that the physical phallus begs for is the space where
the subject is queered in Lemebel‟s novel. This site of utterance is also where the Lacanian
phallus is negotiated, as the writing of the revolutionaries and their machinations vis-à-vis the
dictator occur from the epicenter of the Loca‟s house and mouth. In a textual sense, as the
mouth is the origin of the utterance, song partakes in an oral inscription onto the sexualized
male body. La Loca‟s drunken oral encounter with Carlos‟s penis is structured around the
bolero “Tengo miedo torero” which lends its title to the novel. Lemebel sensuously weaves
in the lyrics and emotions evoked by the song to sexualize the “torero” figure - the
neighborhood transvestite needs the arms of the young Carlos to satiate and protect her.
Music as intertext is dialogic as a queering element, both of the Communist rebel and of the
text, a factor that I analyze in greater detail in Chapter 3.
Lemebel does not stop at simply queering the macho rebel, but instead focuses his
narrative on the figure of the dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Unlike Vargas Llosa who resorts to
the interiority of the dictator in relation to everyone around him, Lemebel triangulates
Pinochet with his wife and her effeminate companion Gonzalo. The queer Gonzalo, who
although does not appear explicitly in the novel, provides a homosexual object to Pinochet‟s
homophobia. Gonzalo importantly does not have his own voice, but speaks by means of the
29
Lemebel‟s queering of the communist Carlos can be contrasted with a Vargas Llosa communist figure. In
Travesuras de la niña mala, the protagonist‟s “niña mala” leaves Paris for Cuba to undergo military training to
become part of the rebel forces planning to invade Peru. True to form, and to the chagrin of the narrator, she
becomes the lover of a Commander Chacón. Though the Commander never appears as an active subject within
the text, he is imagined and written by the narrative voice as being a virile and mustached macho that struts
around with a pair of pistols on his hips (38). Beyond the aesthetics of masculinity, he is sexually superhuman
as he sports a dual phallus.
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dictator‟s wife, which compounds the intimacy afforded by historicizing the patriarch. In a
style that does not include the punctuated separation of voices in the text, her criticisms of
Pinochet echo within and around the interior space of the dictator. She follows him one
morning as he leaves the house, dressed in a bathrobe and yelling:
Tú no me crees, tú piensas que es puro teatro mi dolor de cabeza para no
acompañarte. Tú crees, como todos los hombres, que las mujeres usamos la artimaña
de los bochornos para no hacer ciertas cosas. Imagínate cómo voy a preferir
quedarme aburrida en esta casa tan grande, mientras tú te rascas la panza frente al río,
rodeado de árboles, en esa preciosura de chalet que tenemos en el Cajón del Maipo.
Porque fue idea mía que se la compráramos tan barata, casi regalada, a esos
upelientos que mandaste al exilio […] Piensa tú, ¿que haríamos si no tuviéramos
todas estas propiedades para descansar? Tendríamos que mezclarnos con la chusma
que va al Club Militar a remojarse las patas en la piscina. Qué asco, bañarse en la
misma agua donde tus amigotes, los generales vejestorios, se remojan las bolas. (135)
In addition to disqualifying his thoughts on women, she also asserts herself as the
decision maker of the household. The chalet they own, in addition to the other properties the
dictator amassed are her idea. She does not shy away from deconstructing the façade of the
military man, calling him overweight, and noting that the rest of the military is full of
“chusma” that goes to the Club Militar. The intimacy afforded by Lemebel‟s narrative queers
the hegemonic position of the male within the household, especially when compared with the
relationship between the dictator and his wife in Margarita, está linda la mar, where the
relationship between Somoza and Salvadorita is explored through the proxies of the
conspirator Cordelio and the unsuspecting sergeant Domitilo. With Bible in hand, Cordelio
wonders aloud why the boat they arrive in is named “Salvadorita.” The increasingly annoyed
Domitilo replies that the boat belongs to the First Lady, and that “son sus negocios propios,
distintos de los que tiene el hombre” (82). The wife is separated from el hombre, as
Ramírez‟s focus is not so much on demythifying the dictator as it is finding a point of contact
89
between the caudillo masculinity and the masculinity of the poet figure, with the end game of
constructing a genealogy of the nation based on the latter.
Returning to the years surrounding the publication of Tengo miedo torero and La
fiesta del Chivo, we note that the Chilean author is not constrained by an authoritative
climate of allegory, like that experienced by Vargas Llosa. This is reflected in the almost
playful depiction of Pinochet as a harassed husband in opposition to the hyper masculine in
crisis that the Chivo enacts. Continuing with a comparison between the two novels, testicles
continue to be an important corporal metaphor of patriarchy. Unlike La fiesta del Chivo,
there is no deification of them being essential to masculinity. Instead, Lemebel‟s usage of the
corporeality of the male is founded on them being quotidian and dirty. “Huevos” here are not
essential to man or necessary for patriarchal position – rather they seem to be the stain (that
Melgar Bao describes) inscribed onto the body. Lemebel effectives queers this normative
description of the male body that is observed in works by Vargas Llosa and Ramírez.
The motif of hygiene appears in Tengo miedo torero, just as it did in Vargas Llosa‟s
La fiesta del Chivo. As noted above, the soiling of the Dominican dictator‟s pants was the
first step in his eventual personal (and not political) castration. Lemebel, however, queers the
idea of soiling oneself as he de-phallicizes the act from an organic standpoint, as the penis is
not blamed for staining the patriarch. As Pinochet rests in his car after surviving the plot to
dynamite his motorcade, he loses subjectivity.30 In the backseat of the car, “el Dictador
temblaba como una hoja, no podía hablar, no atinaba a pronunciar palabra, estático, sin
moverse, sin poder acomodarse en el asiento” (174). We learn immediately afterwards that
his paralysis is voluntary: “más bien no quería moverse, sentado en la tibia plasta de su
mierda que lentamente corría por su pierna, dejando escapar el hedor putrefacto del miedo”
30
In much the same way Trujillo did after digitally-raping Urania in La fiesta del Chivo.
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(174).31 The patriarch is soiled, but it is not the penetrating phallus that castrates him from
hegemony. Instead, it is the uncontrollable anal sphincter; the quintessential site of being
penetrated that releases the fecal stain that condemns the dictator, who two years later would
concede political power to a newly formed democratic coalition. The inversion of the
staining tool from the penis to the anus hints at the political position of the author, as
Lemebel, unlike Vargas Llosa, is not engaged in a dialectic of political phallic privation.
Vargas Llosa suggests that Trujillo as the symbolic phallus is broken, thereby
emphasizing the writer‟s own lack and subsequent envy. In opposition to the Peruvian writer
who writes the fall of Trujillo through castration and impotence, Lemebel seems to dip his
Queer pen(is) in something other than ink to inscribe the body of the failing patriarch.
Pinochet, we must remember, faced a controversial return to Chile in 2000 after facing
extradition orders from Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. Tengo miedo torero coincides with a
period of reckoning for the ex-dictator, as he struggled with repeated indictments related to
the oppressive practices committed during his rule. Lemebel‟s exercise in releasing the
character‟s anal sphincter during a tense moment in the novel hints at the author‟s own
judgment of the fate and culpability of Pinochet. If the courts cannot serve justice, then it is
up to Lemebel‟s pen to stain the figure of the dictator.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, the anus precedes the phallus as a zone of
psychosexual development in Freudian thought.32 By relaxing the dictator‟s anus, Lemebel
emphasizes the organic nature of the nation that he envisions in the essay “Censo y
conquista”. He writes:
31
The experience of paralysis following desubjectification is much like that experienced by Trujillo in La fiesta
del Chivo who lays crying in bed after being unable to achieve an erection.
32
Trauma in the former phase, in the shape of fussy parenting, results in an anal retentive character, much like
that of the diegetic Trujillo who suffers from some symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder
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De esta manera, las minorías hacen viable su tráfica existencia, burlando la
enumeración piadosa de las faltas. Los listados de necesidades que el
empadronamiento despliega a lo largo de Chile, como serpiente computacional que
deglute los índices económicos de la población, para procesarlos de acuerdo a los
enjuagues políticos. Cifras y tantos por ciento que llenarán la boca de los
parlamentarios en números gastados por el manoseo del debate partidista. Una
radiografía al intestino flaco chileno expuesta en su mejor perfil neoliberal como
ortopedia de desarrollo. Un boceto social que no se traduce en sus hilados más finos,
que traza rasante las líneas gruesas del cálculo sobre los bajos fondos que las
sustentan, de las imbricaciones clandestinas que van alterando el proyecto
determinante de la democracia.
Lemebel‟s social critique does not stop with Pinochet but continues through the democratic
era. He is particularly taken with neoliberal economic policies and their effect on the people
of Chile. Lemebel‟s disenchantment with neoliberalism calls to mind Sergio Ramírez‟s own
divorce from politics in Nicaragua amidst the liberalizing of the nation‟s economy. One of
the conspirators in Margarita, está linda la mar notes that Somoza “caga por la barriga […]
por medio de una válvula de goma. Lo que pasa es que es un secreto de estado” (37). The
procedure is then described as a “supresión del tracto rectal y formación del ano artificial por
el método de Charles Richter” (37), signaling Somoza‟s own artificial rule in Nicaragua as he
was kept in power by and for American interests. The connection between the anus of the
dictator and the nation is stressed at the end of the novel as Somoza lays on his deathbed after
being stripped naked. An authorial voice intervenes in the narrative and questions: “¿Para eso
te hiciste falsificador de moneda, mariscal de excusados? ¿Qué harías con diarrhea?” (351).
Somoza, importantly, never faced the challenges of balancing neoliberal policies with social
problems and the needs of the poor, lending another question to the narrative‟s interrogation.
Margarita, está linda la mar coincides with the contemporary Rightwing government of
Arnoldo Alemán who held political office under Somoza‟s younger son, Anastasio Somoza
Debayle. The final scatological question in the novel hints at the problems faced by Alemán
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as he increased foreign investment in the country, which resulted in an economic boom. This
boom, however, occurred amidst widespread corruption and nepotism in the government,
which only came to light after Alemán‟s government and after the publication of Margarita,
está linda la mar. The final interrogative by the authorial voice in Ramírez‟s novel
underscores the authors own Leftist ideals and his disenchantment with and suspicion of the
Rightist Nicaraguan governments at the turn of the century.
Taking the anus as a corporal site of political discourse, much like the usage of the
testicles as a signifier for turn-of-the-century economic realities, we can see how Lemebel
queers masculinities and the dictator in Tengo miedo torero. The releasing of the anal
sphincter in Lemebel results in not only a staining of the dictator but also a staining of the
nation, as the country must deal with the fecal remnants of not only Pinochet‟s political rule
but also the neoliberal policies he instituted towards the end of his regime. Lemebel
highlights this problematic in the essay “La esquina es mi corazón”, where he writes:
Herencia neoliberal o futuro despegue capitalista en la economía de esta "demosgracia". Un futuro inalcanzable para estos chicos, un chiste cruel de la candidatura, la
traición de la patria libre. Salvándose de la botas para terminar charqueados en la
misma carroña, en el mismo estropajo que los vio nacer. Qué horizonte para este
estrato juvenil que se jugó sus mejores años. Por cierto irrecuperables, por cierto
hacinados en el lumperío crepuscular del modernismo. Distantes a años luz, de las
mensualidades millonarias que le pagan los ricos a sus retoños en los institutos
privados.
The future under current neoliberal ideas, borne from the “herencia” of the dictatorship, is
sordid and dark according to Lemebel. The scatological connection between the release of
the sphincter and the subsequent “hedor putrefacto del miedo,” with society‟s primordial
“carroña” establishes a connection between the assassination attempt in the novel and
Lemebel‟s writing of contemporary Chilean society in the first decade of the 21st century. In
what has come to be known as “El manifiesto de Pedro Lemebel”, written in 1986, the same
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year as the failed assassination plot, the writer acknowledges: “Me apesta la injusticia / Y
sospecho de esta cueca democrática” (N.p.). He continues to lambast the status quo,
affirming that the present is “como la dictadura / Peor que la dictadura / Porque la dictadura
pasa / Y viene la democracia / Y detrasito el socialismo / ¿Y entonces?” (N.p.). The fecal
discharge in Tengo miedo torero is the metonymic representation of Pinochet‟s free market
economic policies instituted in 1974 to grow the national GDP, which Lemebel cites as
leading to injustice. Chilean neoliberalism put into place by “los Chicago boys” has led to
what has been questionably called in economic circles the Miracle of Chile.
Lemebel‟s sustained critique of neoliberalist tendencies reflects a populist social
concern with the purported economic benefits of the free market system. Lemebel‟s political
position is written into Tengo miedo torero through the anus, which has its own placement
within the erotics of the author and paradigms of sexuality. It is the penetrated orifice, which
Ramírez hesitates to open yet questions, that connects the economic failings of the caudillo
with contemporary neoliberal Latin America. The Loca in Tengo miedo torero engages in
oral sex with the Leftist revolutionary, just as the narrative voice receives fellatio from the
geriatric Loca in “Bésame otra vez forastero” (1992). Lemebel‟s aversion of the anus from a
strictly erotic perspective calls to attention his stressing of the dictator‟s anus and its
aftereffects, as it is an inverted penetration of the sphincter, which is to say not a penetration
from outside the body that leads to the staining of Pinochet. This inversion, again, calls to
mind the economic definition of the term, stressing the conjunct between national economics
and the anus as a discursive site.
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Materialized Bodies / Marketable Bodies.
The displacements of the male body in these new historical novels fall under a larger
concern with how and when the figure of the dictator is written by contemporary Latin
American writers. Sergio Ramírez underscores a trend in commoditizing the male body in
economic terms that deviate from the traditional adoration of the phallus. Vargas Llosa builds
on this objectification of the male body, and chooses a history that is alien to his own
political and societal trajectory, but in doing so suggests that contemporary Peruvian society
is under the iron fist of its own hyper masculine dictator. The writer successfully projects a
political project onto the interplay of masculinities and the erotics of the body within the
societal matrix of Trujillo‟s dictatorship. In a recent interview, the author affirms that “todas
las dictaduras son el mal absoluto” (Forgues 256), suggesting that the diegesis in La fiesta del
Chivo is representative of plural social contexts. In essence, Vargas Llosa‟s Trujillo becomes
a subject within the demystification of hegemonic masculinity in the novel, though this
position of power is never fully challenged in the text. As the final pages suggest, the cycle
perpetuated by the dictator continues with his offspring and that those raped and traumatized
will never fully return to normalcy or heal (Henighan 387).
Conversely, Lemebel and Rivera Garza show an interest in uncovering the aura of the
hyper virile, hegemonic embodiment of masculinity. On the one hand, Rivera Garza explores
the lucid shadows of the psychiatric state in early 20th-century Mexico to bring to the fore
practices, norms, and transgressions of gendered subjects in a society marked by the project
of modernity. The connections between the novel and contemporary Mexican society are
many, as Rivera Garza suggests that women, and men, are still under the auspices of
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hegemonic dictators. She, however, dislocates the political dictator, instead focusing on the
domestic and scientific patriarch and how he was able to carve a period of economic growth
in Mexico that can be read in parallel to 20th-century neoliberal moves. Lemebel on the other
hand, seeks to “denounce the amnesia of the Chilean postdictatorship” (Palaversich 102), as
he notes in an interview, “a country without memory is like a blank slate on which one can
write whatever one wants, reinventing history in agreement with and at the discretion of the
powers currently in vogue” (Novoa 29). Though Lemebel successfully takes up the pen to
fill-in the gaps in Chile‟s lacunar amnesia, it cannot be ignored that he writes, or “reinvents,”
with a Queer pen, as he follows the contemporary polemics of holding Pinochet responsible
for his actions.
Though the figure of the caudillo has been studied ad nauseum, the new historical
novels studied in these pages suggest that the writing of his role within the literary is
pertinent to, and formulated by the economic and political climate of fin-du-siècle Latin
America. As Jameson and others have noted, neoliberal tendencies have led to a
deterritorialization and dematerialization of economic systems. Following this observation,
ideas regarding gender and its representation have suffered a similar fate in Latin American
texts, as a greater number of authors include direct and indirect references, quotes and
epitaphs alluding to North American gender studies. The novels studied in this chapter,
however, evidence a shift from this thought, as these authors attempt a territorialization of
their stories by means of historical contextualization. They are rooted in the contemporary
“crisis in masculinity” brought about by the socioeconomic changes of neoliberal policies
that Mara Viveros (39) and Connell (81) cite.33 Resorting to the past allows for a momentary
33
Viveros sustains the Latin America is undergoing a crisis in masculinity brought about by “importantes
transformaciones sociales, economicas e ideologicas, entre las cuales vale la pena destacar el acceso de las
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escape from the transnational non-spaces and non-identities that McOndo fiction/Latin
America is built on. The new historical novel is by necessity a national manuscript.
Secondly, these authors resist the dematerialization of identity vis-à-vis gender by
explicitly locating their sites of discourse on the male body. The testicles, the mouth, and the
anus all operate as plateaus of inscription, deviating from the physical phallus as signifier of
power. The testes as an example function as an economic discursive space. The mouth
harkens to the possibility of enunciating and/or queering the hegemonic. The anus, as
observed in Lemebel, is the territorialized site of political discourse. They function and
dysfunction as metonymic representations of greater and extratextual processes that can only
be sustained and encapsulated by the corporeality of the male body.
Furthermore, these authors create a market of masculinities within their texts which
reveal a precocious understanding of the interplay between identities, politics, and
economics. Whether it is Ramírez and Vargas Llosa who take great pains to consecrate the
economic nucleus of the testes, or Rivera Garza who creates a system of competing
masculinities vying for political and economic control, a conscious attempt at materializing
the male body has been made. But this process doesn‟t simply stop there. Masculinities in
these texts are commoditized and commercialized in a process and system of mercantilism
that operates in a mimetic fashion to contemporary disjunctions and uncertainties in politicoeconomic policies and governments. Rivera Garza‟s text, as an example, does not adhere to
traditional positions of depicting a single archetype of the masculine ideal as the embodiment
mujeres a niveles de educacion cada vez mayores y los nuevos patrones de insercion laboral de las mujeres”.
Connell argues that the current imperialism instituted by globalization and neoliberalism in Latin America is
analogous to the momentous changes experienced during and after the arrival of the Spaniards, noting that “el
imperio marca un cambio histórico decisivo en la encarnación social de las masculinidades” (84). Connell
appears as Robert Connell in the anthology, prior to her sex reassignment surgery.
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of the national ideal. Instead, she constructs an intricate web of men that is conscious of
gender theorems of hegemony and historicity.
The four novels studied in this chapter share this common trait as they challenge the
novel‟s power in creating the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity. They, instead, opt to
fabricate poly-dimensional matrices of textual masculinities that explore contemporary
themes of power, gender relations, and national identities. As can be expected, these new
masculine textualities force a reframing of the practice of masculinity in contemporary Latin
American fiction; a reframing that is cemented in part by the use of music as an intertextual
referent, which I analyze in the following chapter.
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CHAPTER 3
LYRICAL TEXTUALITIES: MUSIC AND MUSICALITY IN THE
(DE)CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITIES
The new historical novels sampled in Chapter 2 undertake both a rewriting of the
dictator-figure in Latin America and of the male body in a traditional genre that espouses the
phallic power of men. Though each author has been internationalized to some extent, they
territorialize their narratives within a nationally historic framework, just as contemporary
national economies are being deterritorialized. These new historical novels arise at a time
when masculinity is in crisis, due in part to the vast social and demographic changes brought
about by neoliberalism.
Their reaction to this second crisis, however, establishes two distinct characteristics.
First, masculinities in these texts are not simply dominated by the status quo hegemonic
variant. Masculinities are fluid entities that circulate within the interstitial fluids of the
greater construct that is gender in Latin America. They circulate keeping in mind an
economic shift that has changed Latin American society at the turn of the century. They are
ontologically varied and spatially elusive. Secondly, these texts explore the male body as an
epistemological site for political, economic, and social discourses. The corporality of the
body is stressed as erogenous zones are objectified, resulting in a textual meshing of erotics
and economics that reacts to a post-Macondo literary existence.
These two masculine textualities are put into further evidence when studied alongside
another literary trend in Latin American fiction: the intertextual and paratextual use of
musical registers and lyrics. In what has been called “la narrativa de la música popular
latinoamericana,” Enrique Plata Ramírez comments that “a partir de la articulación entre la
literatura y la música popular, alterna y paradójicamente se sacralizaran y desacralizaran,
tanto la música como la literatura” (53). The critic further writes that the point of connection
between music and literature produces “más un encuentro erótico, pulsional, que cultural”
(53). Music is more than a textual leitmotif in these works; it establishes a parallel plane of
discourse that elucidates deeper interpretations of the erotics of any given text. It functions as
a Barthesian semic code that triggers a receptive hermeneutic practice of intertextuality. This
code is appropriated and reworked by these authors who function as bricoleurs that
undertake the Lévi-Straussian enunciative practice of bricolage, where the “signified changes
into the signifying and vice versa” (21).
The inclusion of music as a mutually exclusive medium to narrative establishes a
system of multiple codes, where these codes are not “added to one another, or juxtaposed in
just any manner; they are organized, articulated in terms of one another in accordance with a
certain order, they contract unilateral hierarchies,” thus producing a “system of intercodical
relations […] which is itself, in some sort, another code” (Metz 242). This other semiotic
code, a mixture of both narrative and lyrical registers, houses a tangential, cognitive system
of meanings where the musical and narrative signifiers are re-semantized, thereby permitting
a fruitful perambulation into this intercodical erotics. It is this other plane, where the axes of
narrative and lyric connect, that I am interested in.
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This connection is privileged by the inclusion of music into the written, narrative text,
which follows three poetic schemas, each with their own distinct structures, constructs, and
results. On one level, music serves as a textual channel of sexual objectification. The subject
of desire resides in the diegetic singer who evokes the song and its lyrics. Popular song
characterizes the enunciator and structures his or her interactions. The corporality of the
subject is called into question as the mouth functions as a bodily site of discursivity that is
not limited to the actual text of the music, but instead becomes a position by which gender is
written onto the literary bodies extant in the text. This is evident, for instance, in Pedro
Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero, when the neighborhood transvestite‟s mouth represents the
diegetic site of popular music and the physical pen that writes gender onto her lover‟s body.
Yet popular music as an intertext does not always benefit from an intratextual
subjectification. It appears at times as a passing song overheard on the radio, or as recurring
memory that is evoked and formed around a particular tune. Music as a textuality is
evocative of Mikhail Bakhtin‟s thesis on language in the novel. In Problems of Dostoevsky’s
Poetics (1984), he explains that “dialogic relationships exist among all elements of novelistic
structure; that is, they are juxtaposed contrapuntally” (40). Music as a dialogic element,
therefore, partakes in what the Russian thinker terms polyphony and heteroglossia. The latter
circumscribes the collision of multiple languages and registers within the text, whereas the
former points towards the many voices inherent in an utterance and within a text, as “each
word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life; all
words and forms are populated by intentions” (Dialogic 293).
When present as a dialogic element, music in these cases is extracted from the
corporal body and becomes a body of its own; as an intertextual referent that allows a deeper
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reading into the matrices of power, gender, and race that are extant in contemporary fiction.
As a result, the reader is forced to stop in his tracks and to take an inferential walk away from
the printed page. As Wolfgang Iser underlines, music exists as a literary and social repertoire
(69), though each set of verses forms a schema, which elucidates the reader‟s involvement, as
“the text mobilizes the subjective knowledge present in all kinds of readers and directs it to
one particular end […] It is as if the schema were a hollow form into which the reader is
invited to pour his own store of knowledge” (143). The narrative text is, therefore, dialogic
with the musical referent and its lyrics, genre, interpreters, and receptors. The use of
particular musical genres territorializes this fiction within a sociocultural context, just as the
device of the historical novel roots the works of Cristina Rivera Garza, Pedro Lemebel,
Mario Vargas Llosa and Sergio Ramírez within a topographic boundary.
In this chapter I study Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero (2001), Mayra Montero‟s La
última noche que pasé contigo (1991), Alfredo Bryce Echenique‟s El huerto de mi amada
(2002), and Franz Galich‟s Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera) (2006) as artifacts of
the dialogic relationship between musical and narrative registers. It is by pausing at the
junctures between musical verse and narrative text that I reveal how these novels dialogue
with greater critical and social questions of masculinity. The inclusion of Lemebel‟s novel
serves as fulcrum for establishing a practice of music within the text, as Tengo miedo torero
is flush with multiple points of entry and varied systems of dialogism that allow for a reading
that stresses authorial and hermeneutic appropriations of popular song. In the next step, I
analyze Mayra Montero‟s La última noche que pasé contigo, as it incorporates popular
autochthonous music in an erotic tale that explores the intersections of masculinity and desire
in Caribbean fiction. The inclusion of the novel in this chapter also highlights a critical
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lacuna that has failed to understand the problematizations of masculinities threaded into
Montero‟s narrative. This is brought to fruition as the bolero and other popular Latin genres
embed the narrative within a larger cultural context and allow for non-traditional desires and
sexualities to be experimented with. Popular music within this schema permits a textual
segue between spaces and characters, serving as supportive scaffolding. We can also observe
this structural usage of song in Alfredo Bryce Echenique‟s El huerto de mi amada (2002),
where the classic Cuban tune Siboney clears the path for an exploration of masculinities in
relation to the urban space of Lima. Taking into account theorizations of the homosocial
group vis-à-vis the control of political and societal power, I argue that Bryce Echenique‟s
novel exemplifies the power struggles extant between the various social and cartographic
centers and peripheries in Peru. Building on this dialogic mapping of space and power, the
last novel, Franz Galich‟s Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera), involves a
politicization of music as a genre and explores how it is used in politically reactive fiction. It
occupies a parallel plane of discourse not because it is able to express more than the narrated
text, but because it confronts on a popular and cultural level the challenges faced in
neoliberal and post-revolutionary Latin America. In other words, rock music in Galich‟s text
ingrains an economic repertoire that forces a postcolonial reading of contemporary cultural
imperialism.
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Defining the Literary OST: Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero
The use of music in Tengo miedo torero is unsurprising, particularly if we take into
account that Pedro Lemebel is not only an accomplished writer but also a controversial visual
artist whose gay art collective “Yeguas del Apocalipsis” fosters various video and
photography art projects, performance pieces and plastic sculptures. Those of us familiar
with his multifaceted work know that Lemebel is well known for kissing men in theatre
pieces, and has publicly displayed a television set with pornographic images over his
genitals. This explicit exploration of the scandalous and the taboo explain in part his use of
music in Tengo miedo torero.
Music as a medium is rooted in oral expression and auditory reception. As Sonia
Montecino notes, “la oralidad es la forma en que el ethos latinoamericano ha trasmitido su
historia y su resistencia frente a la expansión del texto. La oralidad es también el lenguaje
que […] desencadena un habla que se resiste a cierta economía porque sus tiempos no son los
de la producción en serie” (164). Lemebel‟s text is polyphonic in the Bakhtinian sense,
leading Berta López Morales to characterize Tengo miedo torero as an expression of multiple
ventriloquist voices.34 The critic notes that the text substitutes for the real body and allows a
reading that allows a penetration of the body from various angles:
Por un lado, la fruición del lenguaje, gustado y degustado por la lengua que al tocar el
paladar repite la fricción, el contacto de los fluidos corporales; por otra, el placer
voyeurista, el ojo voraz que mira aquello dicho, susurrado, murmurado por la voz
34
Bakhtin argues that the author channels the heteroglossia incorporated into a piece of writing, animating these
voices as though they are coherent, akin to the theatrical device of the performer who imbibes life through
speech into a mannequin (The Dialogic Imagination 181). Lemebel‟s narrative speaks the discourses of multiple
groups and subject positions within and outside the diegesis in a complex polyphonic register that illuminates
the multiplicities of masculine identity. Similarly, Erving Goffman‟s work in Frame Analysis: An Essay on the
Organization of Experience (Cambridge: Harvard UP 1974) builds on the art of ventriloquism in the novel.
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otra, voz ventrílocua, contradictoria y contrahecha que oculta, se sobrepone y borra la
Voz oficial. (121)
López Morales focuses her analysis on the second exception of the voice in
Lemebel‟s work. The critic demonstrates how the protagonist‟s register and diction are a
reflection of her own physical body, commenting that “cuplés, baladas, boleros, tangos,
música del recuerdo, del ayer, le prestan su registro y hacen de su voz un collage, un pastiche
de sonidos donde el sentido se fuga, haciendo de la voz de la Loca del Frente una voz
travesti, excedida en la modulación de lo femenino” (127). Music frames the figure of the
Loca in the novel, but I argue that it goes further than being a mere novelistic recourse of
characterization. Music holds a structural function in La Loca‟s interactions with Carlos, the
young Communist revolutionary who is also her lover, and lends itself as a textual
soundtrack to the plot. Lemebel evokes music as a filmic recourse, much like the songs sung
by actors and actresses of celluloid art, and much like the extradiegetic tunes that were made
popular in Hollywood cinema, especially with the advent of “original soundtrack”
compilations that were later sold to satiate film fans.
The reference to cinema as a narrative medium serving as an intertext to these novels
should come as no surprise as film‟s poietic past is structured around filmic adaptations of
popular narratives.35 The use of popular music in cinema, according to Arthur Knight and
Pamela Robertson Wojcik, creates a tangential trajectory of meaning as “increasingly, it
seems, we think in soundtracks” (1). They argue that popular music in film is not exclusively
a post-1950s phenomenon, but instead harkens back to the original days of silent cinema. It
isn‟t until the 1950s, however, that Hollywood begins to market compilation albums that
were labeled as original motion picture soundtrack, which was later contracted to “original
35
For further reading into the history of film vis-à-vis literature, please consult Brian McFarlane (381) and
Linda Hutcheon (Introduction).
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soundtrack,” or “OST.”36 Contemporary OST recordings include a mix of diegetic popular
songs, nondiegetic lyrical and acoustic compositions, and cast-sang numbers that are
intrinsically diegetic to the filmic plot.
What interests me in their analysis of the intersection between music and cinema is
the assertion that “popular music becomes a key aural component of mise-en-scène in genre
films” (4). The connection between music, the fictive plot, and reception is summarized
byAnnette Davison when she adds that “as a result of adhering to classical conventions, this
kind of scoring works hard to encourage the audience to surrender to the film and fully
engage with the emotional worlds and action depicted on the screen” (3).
Analogously, the intertextual relationship between literature and music holds these
observations to be true, as the juncture between narrative and song creates an alternate plane
of meaning in the novel. This connection between purportedly high and low art is
contextualized by Iris Zavala in the case of Latin American fiction. She reflects how “los
saltos cuánticos de la música que llevamos por dentro que se hace letra […] la inyección de
vida que le da lo llamado popular a la escritura de esa ciudad letrada en que se suele
monumentalizar y canonizar la así llamada gran literatura” (11). The critic summarizes her
position by emphatically proclaiming that “ni muros, ni vallas, ni murallas pueden contener
el torrente de la expresión cultural mal llamada popular” (11). Keeping with this assertion,
we can observe how popular music becomes a key aural and literary component of gender
discourses in contemporary Latin American narratives, as authors revert to specific genres to
serve as the foundations to the erotics they pen to fully engage their readers within the
emotional, fictive world of the novel.
36
For a comprehensive introduction to the phenomenon of the soundtrack album, see Annette Davison‟s
Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice, 2004.
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Adding to the theorization of an affective intertextuality between sound/song and the
narrated plot (whether visual or textual), Knight and Wojcik note that “in addition to serving
as nondiegetic score, popular music enters the soundtrack by ways of musical performance,
source radios, and record players. In films, people sing, sing-along, lip-synch, dance and play
to popular music” (5). Analogously, music enters the novel through a variety of mediums and
textual strategies, including the nondiegetic score, character performance, radio and sound
devices, and diegetic singing, indicative of the plurality of composition in cinematic original
soundtrack albums.37
The original soundtrack to Tengo miedo torero begins with the title song in the
introduction of the protagonist, La Loca, in her neighborhood as she sings “Tengo miedo
torero, tengo miedo que en la tarde tu risa flote” (10). The transvestite begins the novel‟s
OST album with a diegetically sang piece, which in the case of Tengo miedo torero, would
be referenced as a cast-sung numer.38 Critics have mistakenly pegged this tune to the popular
Spanish singer Sara Montiel, which the author, however, explains to be false. Lemebel
clarifies that the title of the book comes from a meeting with an old transvestite friend, who
37
Davison defines classical Hollywood scoring as a set of practices “united in the aim of heightening the fictive
reality of a film‟s narrative” (2), which saw a re-emergence beginning with a series of disaster movies in the
early 1970s.
38
During a recent discussion of this novel, I was chided by a member of the audience who told me to never
refer to the protagonist as a transvestite, as the correct term is a transgendered person. I have several problems
with this assertion. First, by calling La Loca a transgendered person, we are assuming that she is a woman
trapped in a man‟s body. Sifuentes-Jáuregui asserts otherwise, and I tend to agree with him, as he argues that
the transvestite blurs the boundaries of male/female, and that transvestism cannot be confused with wanting to
be of the other sex. My second problem with my interlocutor‟s terminology resides in the unabashed application
of a North American gender studies term to a very local figure that clearly does not associate herself/himself
with women, but instead carves out a separate and very specific gender expression. We can note this separation
in her thesis on fellatio, as she argues that “las mujeres no saben nada de esto […] ellas solo lo chupan, en
cambio las locas elaboran un bordado cantante en la sinfonía de mamar” (100). It is through this act of gender
disassociation from the binary that I identify La Loca as a transvestite and not as a transgendered person, as she
shows no inclinations of belonging to the parameters of woman. The problems faced by critics when talking
about trans identities is perfectly novelized in Santos-Febres‟s Sirena Selena, where the only thing we can be
sure about is the trans- nature of the protagonist, which is to say a state of being that is always in between
different positions, without necessarily subscribing to any single role or rulebook, escaping the lingo
perpetuated by gender studies.
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told him of her performances as Montiel, and how she sang the tunes “El último cuplé” and
“Tengo miedo torero.” A laughing Lemebel asks her what follows, to which she replies
“tengo miedo que tu risa, a la tarde, flote,” which is represented by the Loca singing in the
novel. The author then unveils that the song does not exist and that “la travesti mintió”
(“Entrevista”).39
Inadvertently, Lemebel‟s appropriation of the transvestite‟s lie comes to form the
structural, literary, and lyrical axis mundi to the novel. From a structural standpoint, the song
establishes a positionality of power within the text, with the singer, the torero, and some
unseen danger forming a triangulation of potential erotic dynamics in the novel. The song
acts as a literary center as its use establishes the inclusion of other diegetic and nondiegetic
popular music, thereby aligning Lemebel‟s narrative with other contemporary fiction that
recurs to song. Finally, the singing of the fictitious Tengo miedo torero by Lemebel‟s
protagonist establishes the beginning of a structured and documented set of songs that come
to form the novel‟s OST album.
Though the author‟s appropriation of the song is ontological to both the poiesis and
reception of the text, it does create a literary side effect, as by using a fictive song, the
inclusion of Tengo miedo torero (the novel) into the musical-textual mould of other works
such as La última noche que pasé contigo, El huerto de mi amada, and Y te diré quién eres
(Mariposa traicionera) proves problematic. The recurrent use of verifiable popular music in
the text, however, allows for a musical analysis, as popular music is actively interlaced as
39
Lemebel makes no reference to the song “Tengo miedo torero” by Spanish copla singer, Marifé de Triana,
who records the song in 1964. The song expresses the fear a woman feels every afternoon she sees her adored
torero fight a bull. The song is vaguely voyeuristic of the erotic agony of bullfighting, and places the female (or
homosexual) subject at a place of power, away from the violence of the ring, yet at the same time intimately
connected to the blood and death experienced by the male figure and the bull. The verses that La Loca sings,
however, do not appear in the song.
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intertext to the novel. What is relevant, from a critical standpoint, is that Lemebel‟s failure to
investigate the true origins and lyrics of the song lends a tone of uncertainty to the narrative,
suggesting that not everything is as it seems (or as it is historically represented). The writer
pens a new historical novel, but in doing so, deviates heavily from the traditional dictates of
this literary genre.40
Returning to popular song in Tengo miedo torero, we note how immediately after the
purported title piece, the narrative segues into Consuelo Velázquez‟s “Bésame mucho,”
which is the only song that is explicitly mentioned by title but that is never sung by the Loca
or heard on the radio or included as transcripted lyrics. Instead it is mentioned in passing, as
La Loca is described as “tosiendo el <<Bésame mucho>> en las nubes de polvo y cachureos
que arrumbaba en la cuneta” (10). “Bésame mucho” is never enunciated, never placed in the
mouth as a discursive site, and therefore evades a positioning vis-à-vis the desire, identity,
and gender of La Loca. This caveat hints at the connection between the title of the song and
the titular “Tengo miedo torero,” suggesting that Velázquez‟s song functions as the real
secondary level of discourse that music brings to the text. A closer examination of the lyrics
of both songs shows how “Tengo miedo torero” borrows heavily from the final lines of the
first and last stanza of “Bésame mucho,” as what is expressed is the fear of losing love and
the loved one. La Loca‟s interpretation of the song, however, subjugates her voice to a
domineering, macho, and penetrating matador, when compared to Velázquez‟s gender
neutral lyrics.41 This genderizing of the title results in a queering of the subject‟s speech that
goes beyond the rouge and lipstick that physically contrasts La Loca to the normative, virile
40
I analyze this particular aspect of the novel in Chapter 1, “Bodies that Matter: Queer(ing) Masculinities and
the Fall of the Dictator.”
41
I refer to both the diegetic and extra-diegetic Locas who enunciate the song.
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masculinities of the military dictator and the Communist rebel. Music, therefore, creates a
second level of gender discourse that is only made possible by being enunciated from the
mouth of the toothless Loca. The Loca as a corporal body that captures and enables this
discourse harkens to the authorial note where Lemebel reveals that the novel was originally
written the in the 1980s but remained “por años traspapelad(a) entre abanicos, medias de
encaje y cosméticos que mancharon de rouge la caligrafía romancera de sus letras” (7). Like
the frilled fan that only gains meaning when agitated rythmically, music as an intertext only
rises to the plane of discourse when performed or gestured to.
Song in Tengo miedo torero is queered as a result of the dialectic between “Tengo
miedo torero” and “Bésame mucho,” which results in gender neutral pieces such as “Tú
querías que te dejara de querer” being tinged by the homoerotics of the author. La Loca sings
this popular Juan Gabriel song as she ponders her one-sided relationship with Carlos (36).42
She surmises that her relationship is representative of:
Amores de folletín, de panfleto arrugado, amores perdidos, rastrojeados en la
guaracha plañidera del maricón solo, el maricón hambriento de <<besos brujos>>, el
maricón drogado por el tacto imaginario de una mano volantín rozando el cielo turbio
de su carne, el maricón infinitamente preso por la lepra coliflora de su jaula, maricón
trululú, atrapado en su telaraña melancólica de rizos y embelecos, el maricón rififí
entretejido, hilvanado en los pespuntos de su propia trama. (36)
The song laments the loss of affection in a relationship as one lover leaves the other who still
yearns for physical intimacy. Not having had relations with Carlos, La Loca‟s singing of “Tú
querías que te dejara de querer” implicates gender structures on a societal level as Lemebel
poeticizes the plight of the homosexual in Chilean society who has an ambiguous
relationship with heterosexual men. The line between homo- and heterosexuality is not
42
Born Alberto Aguilera Valadez (1950), Juan Gabriel is a Mexican singer best known for his rancheras,
ballads, and pop music. Though strongly secretive about his own sexuality, popular opinion holds him to be a
quintessentially Queer Mexican popular figure.
110
always clear in a context where the depictions of the virile masculine abound. Citing works
by Roger Lancaster and Richard Parker, Oscar Misael Hernández argues that dichotomies of
hegemonic versus non-hegemonic masculinities do not always function in Latin America, as
it is normal for married men, who self-identify as heterosexuals, to engage in homosexual sex
with various partners (70).
La Loca‟s song, therefore, summons the homoerotics of a Chilean society that
subordinates the homosexual, yet at the same time uses him to satiate its own desires. The
mouth is the locus of a political, queering discourse that engages the practice of
masculinities, especially in relation to the subordination of homosexual masculinities. But it
is only La Loca‟s mouth that enjoys this privilege, as when Carlos attempts to sing “Contigo
en la distancia,” his voice “se quebró en un gallo lírico que lo hizo toser y toser, llenándosele
los ojos de lágrimas por el ahogo y la risa” (83).
His failed attempt at singing, characterized by the impotency of his mouth, is
contrasted with La Loca‟s mouth where her “lengua marucha se obstinara en nombrarlo,
llamándolo, lamiéndolo, saboreando esas sílabas, mascando ese nombre, llenándose toda con
ese Carlos tan profundo” (13). Lemebel‟s text is not only musical, as in the description of the
condition of the homosexual in society, but also evocative of a symphonics that interweaves
the written word, the dressed up Loca, the listened song, and the hypermasculine, virile body
of the Communist rebel. He is called into being as the transvestite pronounces that his name
is so strong “para quedarse toda suspiro, arropada entre la C y la A de ese C-arlos que
iluminaba con su presencia toda la c-asa” (13). La Loca‟s reflection on his name involves a
climax and a decline into silence that is punctuated by a sigh that is eroticized by her tongue
that calls, licks, and tastes him/the syllables of his name.
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The mouth of La Loca comes into play once more in the one sexual encounter
between the two characters. After hosting a Cuban-style birthday party, La Loca surprises
Carlos with a bottle of pisco and some music. Lemebel incorporates the lyrics of his phantom
song into this scene, as both characters listen to a vinyl recording. Popular music
cinematically frames the narrative, taking on the role of the title song of the original
soundtrack to Tengo miedo torero, as the two characters share a moment of intimacy that is
interrupted by La Loca‟s melancholic yearning for being closer to Carlos. He subsequently
consoles her, adding that “pero no por eso vamos a dejar de tomar, reina […] poniéndole la
corona al extender sus labios en una sonrisa perlada” (94). This is the first reference that the
reader has to Carlos‟s mouth, which immediately precedes his confession of a (queering)
secret to the transvestite. He tells her of an encounter with another young boy when he was
thirteen or fourteen. Just as the adolescents began to rub themselves against the sand, Carlos
is overtaken by desire and he confesses “y no pude más porque de un salto lo monté, pero él
se dió la vuelta y me dijo que yo primero, pero yo le contesté que ni cagando, que me dejara
ponerle la puntita, la pura puntita” (95). By bringing Carlos‟s mouth into being, Lemebel
opens a dialogue into the queering of this masculine figure that is for all sakes and purposes
the heterosexual ideal. He falls outside of Raewyn Connell‟s idea of hegemonic masculinity,
but his political leanings do not necessarily sublate his complicity with the ideal, if this is to
be taken as the dictator figure that was analyzed in the first chapter.
It is Carlos‟s words that queer him, especially after he confides: “no sé por qué yo no
me moví cuando le saltó el chorro de moco que me mojó la pierna” (96). This staining of the
subject, which I explicate in the previous chapter, causes a sense of shame in Carlos, so much
so that “a los dos nos quedó una cosa sucia que nos hacía bajar la vista cuando nos
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cruzábamos en el patio del liceo” (96).43 The textual introduction of the subject‟s mouth
enables a queering of the subject‟s masculinity, a decentering from the viably Masculine,
recognizing that this position is variable and contingent on societal constructs of what is and
what is not metonymic of power. The source of shame in Carlos‟s encounter is the staining of
the semen on his leg and not the desire he felt for sodomizing his friend, as this is explained
as simply being “cosas de cabros chicos” (96). More so than homoerotic desire, it is the
violation of the Masculine‟s adherence to cleanliness and hygiene that succeeds in displacing
the revolutionary masculine from a position of power.
After this confession La Loca leaves to find Carlos a blanket, only to discover him
asleep and snoring “por los fuelles ventoleros de su boca abierta” (97). His open mouth
foreshadows La Loca‟s subsequent actions, as she undresses him to reveal “un grueso dedo
sin uña que pedía a gritos una boca que anillara su amoratado glande” (99). Lemebel‟s
narrative underlines the queering nature of the physical mouth, as La Loca prepares herself
to fellate Carlos, “sacándose la placa de dientes, se mojó los labios con saliva para resbalar
sin trabas ese péndulo que campaneó en sus encias huecas” (99).
If bodies do matter, as gender theorists such as Judith Butler and Raewyn Connell
assert, then the ontologically masculine protrusion of the male body enters a site of reckoning
as it is placed in the discursive site of the mouth, where discourses of gender, masculinity,
and queering take place. The author further refers to the transvestite figure as “la boca-loca”
(100), suggesting that the mouth is ontological to the Queer subject, and that only in and
43
I analyze a similar scene in Jaime Bayly‟s No se lo digas a nadie (1994) in Chapter 3, paying special attention
to the importance of the school as a spatial referent for the construct/construction of masculinities.
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through it can the negotiation of a Queer(ing) identity take place.44 In the “concavidad
húmeda” (99) of La Loca, Lemebel evokes music, musicality, and song as he observes that
“las locas elaboran un bordado cantante en la sinfonía de su mamar […] La Loca solo
degusta y luego trina su catadura lírica por el micrófono carnal que expande su radiofónica
libación” (100). The detoothed transvestite further comments that fellatio “es como cantar
[…] interpretarle a Carlos un himno de amor directo al corazón” (100).45
This scene in the novel is brought to a sensual crescendo when the author again
locates his narrative in the male mouth, as “el mono solidario le brindó una gran lágrima de
vidrio para lubricar el canto reseco de su incomprendida soledad” (100). Lemebel
immediately follows with the lyrics to “Ansiedad” by J.E. Sarabia Rodríguez, which evokes
imagery and sentiments that are congruent with the narrated events:
Ansiedad de tenerte en mis brazos,
musitando palabras de amor,
Ansiedad de tener tus encantos
y en la boca volverte a besar. (101)
The text does not disclose whether or not this song belongs to the diegetic vinyl record that is
played at the beginning of their encounter, or if it belongs to the cinematic soundtrack that
floats over the narrative, setting the mood of the scene and creating a secondary level of
discourse that runs parallel to the signifiers in the text, but that elucidates an intertextual
44
This idea brings to mind José Donoso‟s La Manuela, in El lugar sin límites (1966), who proclaims that “vieja
estaría pero se iba a morir cantando y con las plumas puestas” (16). La Manuela, unlike Lemebel‟s Loca, never
succeeds in queering an other, and is queered herself when she recounts how La Japonesa, a woman, cajoles her
into having sex to win a bet. Donoso, however, does not objectify the male body but instead explores the
violence exerted against homosexuals by other masculinities in a rural Latin American village. He does
objectify the transvestite‟s penis, which is described to be enormous, reflecting the importance placed in fiction
on the physical phallus to characterize the masculine in early and mid 20th-century fiction.
45
The relationship between heterosexual revolutionary and homosexual bears some resemblances to Manuel
Puig‟s couple of Valentín and Molina in El beso de la mujer araña (1976). Their moment of physical
engagement and the subsequent queering of the dissident Valentín, however, are mediated through the anus,
which I argue is a site of political discourse that is inscribed onto the male body, which Puig uses to challenge
Argentine censorship and oppression during the 1970s.
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reading that overhauls traditional textual analysis of the work. Connecting the two narratives
together, we can see that Sarabia Rodríguez‟s lyrics reveal La Loca‟s love for Carlos as being
rooted in more than physical desire. We can also observe in the song that the evocation of the
mouth as a site of desire and as a site of utterance is queered when associated with the
character of La Loca who fellates the young revolutionary, thereby calling into question his
positioning within the matrices of masculinity.46
Though Lemebel‟s novel is titled with an imagined song, the role of popular music as
an intertext in writing masculinities within its pages cannot be ignored. The OST of Tengo
miedo torero is replete with diegetic solos, extradiegetic tunes, and diegetic pieces that
reflect the narrative trajectory of La Loca and Carlos. Song, as lyrics sung by diegetic
characters, however, is primal in understanding the Queering politics of Lemebel and the
usage of the male mouth as a site of discursivity that confronts heteronormative ideas of
masculinity.47 But not all literary soundtracks enjoy the collaboration of the leading
lady/man/transvestite. How are masculinities, then, negotiated in these texts, when the
narrative stops short of, or actively resists a representation of desire?
Towards a Lyrical Epistemology of Masculine Desire.
Mayra Montero‟s La última noche que pasé contigo is a classic erotic-Caribbean text
that inculcates the use of the bolero as a literary intertext, following in the school of other
46
I look at this archetype of revolutionary masculinity in greater detail in Chapter 6.
47
Another example of this phenomenon can be seen in Mayra Santos-Febres‟s Sirena Selena vestida de pena
(2000), where the transvestite protagonist sings a series of boleros that challenge gender norms and what it
means to be masculine/feminine. The young Sirena queers heteronormative figures like the married
businessman, Hugo Graubel, through the boleros that she sings in her performances. Furthermore, the bolero
functions as a psychical barometer of the desire felt by the protagonist, and of her self-identification with a
Queer identity.
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novels such as La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos (1989) by Luis Rafael Sánchez, El
entierro de Cortijo (1983) and Una noche con Iris Chacón (1986) by Edgardo Rodríguez
Juliá, and El libro de Apolonia o de las islas (1993) by Iris Zavala. The use of popular music
by these authors comes as a result of earlier shifts in the telos of Puerto Rican literature,
which began to veer from the works and styles of canonical authors and their texts. As
Leonora Simonovis explains:
Escritores como Luis Rafael Sánchez, Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, Ana Lydia Vega
y Rosario Ferré, entre otros, se abocaron a la tarea de desplazar el discurso canόnico
de las décadas precedentes, así como a proyectar el universo simbόlico de sus obras
hacia otros ámbitos, distintos a los que proponían los escritores canόnicos. En este
sentido, la indagaciόn histόrica, el diálogo con otros discursos (feminista, político o
econόmico, entre otros) y la asimilaciόn de la cultura popular o de masas, constituyen
[. . .] un conjunto de respuestas a las crisis políticas y sociales de Puerto Rico . . . (1112)
From a cultural standpoint, the sociopolitical crises of the 1970s and afterwards throw
traditional family and sexual structures into a flux that unearths private and public concerns
with gender. Emblematic of this process is La guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976) by Luis
Rafael Sánchez. This period onwards, as outlined previously, has been characterized by a
crisis in the systems of gender in Latin America that has manifested itself in popular cultural
artefacts. The use of music in these texts, therefore, is symptomatic of a broader feeling of
change and crisis, and a study of its tunes permits an unearthing of its many problems by
means of tearing at the fabric of the canonical and/or high culture. These narratives explore
the quotidian, personal happenings of peoples and situations that open up tectonic crack-lines
of power and identity over the image of the region. As Enrique Plata Ramírez observes:
La narrativa caribeña se apropia del discurso musical, para dar cuenta del caribeño en
cuanto ser pluricultural, de su cultura, su identidad y su perifericidad. Estas
apropiaciones discursivas musicales permiten sostener el encuentro de lo heterogéneo
y la transgresión de una alta cultura que dará paso a la cultura popular. Esta tradición
narrativa es ya larga e intensa y no parece tener punto final en lo inmediato. (61)
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The use of the bolero as a narratological fulcrum to explore plural and varied
discourses is a result of its own historical development.48 In an archaeological social study of
the genre, Alex Fleites affirms that:
El bolero ha devenido un estado del espíritu y un elemento de reconocimiento del
llamado ser latino; quizás después del Español, el único nutriente fácilmente
detectable de la identidad continental. Es algo que nos signa, que nos expresa y, ¿por
qué no?, nos limita dentro de unos marcos éticos y filosóficos que, con el tiempo, han
llegado a constituir verdaderos esquemas de conducta. (2)
The genre, he explains, is historically adaptable and transnational.49 Bolero music is also a
highly erotic genre of musical expression, as it proposes “una actitud ante el amor, pero más:
organiza a nivel simbólico las distintas situaciones que puede enfrentar el enamorado” (8).
The inclusion of its lyrics and melodies into the narrative of writers across the continent
stresses its exploration of identity in Latin America, as “muchos de los elementos estables de
la identidad latinoamericana, de su ser más entrañable, se han depositado, se han difundido y
fijado a través del bolero” (Fleites 11).
This intersection between culture and identity is explored in its plural manifestations
in Montero‟s novel.50 La última noche que pasé contigo inserts the reader into the marriage
and personal musings of a pair of empty-nesters (Celia and Fernando) who take a cruise
vacation after the marriage of their only child (Elena). Located in the nonterritorial spatial
48
Jorge Rosario-Vélez provides a succinct yet complete bibliography of the bolero in his article “Somos un
sueño imposible.”
49
Citing “Tristezas” (1885) by Pepe Sánchez as the first bolero, the critic explicates the incorporation of jazz
instruments and contemporary techniques in 1950s Havana as an example of how the bolero has kept up with
the times (3).
50
Though born in Havana, Cuba, Montero has lived for over half a century in Puerto Rico. She is politically
active and has taken part in proclamations presented by the Latin American and Caribbean Congress for the
Independence of Puerto Rico (November 2006). She heavily favors a change towards sovereignty and
independence from North American legislative rule. In an interview given in February of 2008, the author
argues that Puerto Rico “es una colonia de los Estados Unidos, y a nadie le gusta vivir en un régimen colonial.”
In interviews, Montero endorses a distinctively Latin American tradition to her texts instead of a more North
American heritage.
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coordinate of the ocean, the couple enters a period of marked sexual activity with each other
and with others. The trip cathartically plays out in the sexual awakenings of both husband
and wife. Celia reminisces about an extramarital affair she had with the caretaker of her sick
father, Agustín Conejo. She subsequently has another affair during a stopover in their cruise
with an Afro-Caribbean man. Fernando, on the other hand, rehashes the feelings and passions
he felt during Celia‟s first infidelity and has his own trysts with the enigmatic Julieta, a
mature woman who meets the couple aboard the cruise. Arranging an erotic dynamism that
weaves tales and encounters of passion, mistrust, and animalistic sex, Montero places all the
cards on the table when at the end of the novel, the reader discovers that Julieta is Conejo‟s
ex-wife, thereby connecting all ends in an act of erotic serendipity.
In addition to separating the novel into eight distinct chapters headed by bolero titles,
Montero intersperses amidst the voices of Fernando and Celia a collection of nine letters that
appear sporadically in the novel. Written between Abel (a pseudonym for a woman, Mariana)
and Ángela, these letters we find connect Fernando to Celia in their respective childhoods.
The letters also reveal that Mariana leaves Ángela for a younger woman, Julieta, who
becomes Fernando‟s lover while on the cruise.
Jumping to a structural characterization of the piece, popular bolero music composes
the OST of La última noche que pasé contigo, as Montero organizes her chapters around the
genre, probing Enrique Plata Ramírez to argue that “la letra de los boleros [son] el recurso
ficcional que permit[e] instaurar el discurso narrativo, aproximarse hacia el erotismo, la
sensualidad y las historias paralelas de los sujetos periféricos que se sienten al borde de sus
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vidas” (60). The critic‟s observation is followed by others who have studied the role of song
in Montero‟s pages.51 As an exemplary voice in this chorus, Irma López underlines that:
Montero emplea la música del bolero para darle sustento a toda su novela, tanto a
nivel de la estructura como de la fábula, ya que no solo el título corresponde a esta
música tradicional del mundo hispano sino que las ocho secciones de la novela están
encabezadas con esta “lírica del goce,” de seducción y sensualidad […]. Tema y
técnica se entrelazan en la elaboración textual, pues las historias de los personajes
paralelan los arrebatos pasionales de las melodías. (138)
The connection made between bolero and the erotics of the novel is strengthened in Myrna
García-Calderón‟s article, as she underlines that the symbiosis between lyrical and narrative
text is very different in each chapter. She identifies how Celia‟s relationship with the bolero
changes as the novel progresses, with the final chapter showcasing the female protagonist‟s
rejection of patriarchy and phallogocentrism that is almost intrinsic to the erotics of the
bolero. The focus on feminine sexuality is echoed in López‟s study, as she asserts that “La
última noche se suma así a un corpus de ficción hispanoamericano que trata el discurso
erótico como otro medio para mellar los códigos sociales rígidos que impiden la autonomía
sexual de las mujeres” (134).
From this cursory review, it is obvious that the role of music in La última noche que
pasé contigo vis-à-vis desire and eroticism, especially per the female subject, has been
analyzed ad nauseum. The inclusion of this novel in this chapter may seem off-putting to the
reader, leading to an inquiry of what can be further analyzed that has not already been said.
The following pages, however, will build on the critical work done on popular music in the
text by examining how these frames represent and negotiate masculinities in La última noche
que pasé contigo, taking into account the essence of the bolero and the spatial referents that
51
For an excellent structural analysis of the novel, see Robert Lauer‟s article (1997). The critic organizes his
analysis around the perceived speed of narrative versus epistolary text, which allows for an infusion of “ficción
sexual” in the novel (46).
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plot out Montero‟s narrative. It builds on the idea that popular music functions as a textual
resource to write, represent, and discuss masculinities in fiction.
Curiously, the only critical texts dealing with masculinity in the novel focus on the
“lesbianizing” of the male protagonist (Lauer, “El (homo)erotismo” 47; Lauer, “La
representación” 47). The critic, Robert Lauer, cites the latent homosexual desire in Fernando
and his sexual fixation on orality to characterize him as being lesbianized. He interjects that
men are less likely to problematize their own sexualities in fiction (“La representación” 46).
To typify Montero‟s fiction, he adds:
La ficción sexual de Mayra Montero, al investigar la psique de sus personajes, nos da
una representación del deseo masculino en toda su vulnerabilidad y complejidad,
dando a la literatura erótica escrita por una mujer una perspectiva más amplia y
humanizante, que al mismo tiempo que desestabiliza, también amplía el canon de un
modo literario que hasta tiempos recientes solía considerarse propiedad casi exclusiva
de hombres de letras. (“La representación” 48)
Lauer‟s assertion, though well-intentioned, fails to acknowledge the narratives of
heterosexual men who do problematize their heterosexuality and desire.52 Furthermore, the
critic does not engage the practice and existence of masculinities in the novel‟s topographic
referent, a striking omission in a novel that is rich in its portrayal of hierarchical
masculinities in the Caribbean.
The matrices of masculinity are unearthed through the male protagonist, Fernando, as
his narrative opens Montero‟s foray into empty-nester sexuality. Aside from commenting on
the redundancy of coitus with his wife, he reveals his friend Bermúdez as a symbol of male
homosociality, as it is through him that he learns lessons about marriage and of the cruise
52
Sergio Ramírez‟s Margarita, está linda la mar and Franz Galich‟s Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa
traicionera) are two examples of the many texts that examine seemingly heterosexual male characters who
indulge in isolated or frequent acts of homoeroticism. His comments also fail to account for various novels
published by Enrique Serna and Luis Arturo Ramos. On another note, Lauer‟s assertion fails to account for the
narratives of self-identified homosexual male authors who routinely put under the microscope masculine
erotics. The novel by Pedro Lemebel, studied earlier in this chapter, is a small caveat in this tendency.
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that they are on. The relationship between Bermúdez and Fernando does not reveal per se a
dialoguing with Connell‟s ideas of hegemonic masculinity, in the political or Gramscian
sense, but instead reflects on Chris Beasley‟s reclassification of what hegemony actually
means in masculinity studies. The homosocial group in La última noche que pasé contigo
reflects the usage of the term hegemonic masculinity only if and when it applies to an
“empirical reference specifically to actual groups of men” (171). Beasley underlines that
these men are not “entirely discrete definitional entities” (173) from the mechanism of
patriarchal legitimization that is traditionally defined as hegemonic masculinity. We must
keep in mind, however, that the umbrella term in its cultural and political incarnation is
implicitly constructed by and through real groups of men, as the “butcher” homosocial
evidenced in Montero‟s novel.
The narrative further reveals that Bermúdez takes on the role of educator to Fernando,
teaching him what the homosocial considers the ways of life, love, and adventure. He is a
figure full of theories and explanations for the intricacies of gender relations. In one example,
he hypothesizes that the open ocean will make Celia into a tigress in the bedroom, as the hot
waters of the Caribbean smell of rotten seafood. Bermúdez argues that “el marisco pasado, ya
tú sabes, es olor de mujer” (14). Whether consciously or simply through a process of dialogic
osmosis, Fernando assimilates this discourse as he discloses that Celia touches his “labios
con la punta de su dedo perverso, su dedo sátiro que olía a marisco antiguo, a tierra remojada,
a puro mar de las Antillas” (23).
The homosocial bond between Fernando and Bermúdez is reinforced when the former
confides a dream he has the night before his daughter‟s marriage to Alberto, where he finds
himself in his son-in-law‟s car having sex with a friend of Elena. With what can be
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characterized as a homosocial reply, following Eve Sedgwick‟s idea of desire within the allmale group, Bermúdez asks if the friend is attractive or not. Basing her ideas on the earlier
work by René Girard, Sedgwick further argues that the expression of desire within the
homosocial group is often through the use of violence (176). She further theorizes that
homosocial groups of men are interdependent on each other and on the group as a whole, and
are kept in this relationship by the commercialization of women as an outlet for the desire
they feel for each other. Sedgwick‟s theory relies on an implicit homosexual drive between
members of the homosocial that can only be made public by the possession of desired
women. Fernando, however, does not disclose the events of the day before the dream, when
he spied Elena having sex with Alberto in the backseat of the car. His silence convicts him of
first degree voyeurism and incestuous thoughts, though Freud would argue that the latter
always merits a pleading of nolo contendere.
The language of the middle-aged Fernando reveals a subtle discomfort with the
practice of heterosexual, vaginal sex, as he describes it as being “la carnicería” (15). It is an
act where Alberto massacres his daughter and where he massacres his daughter‟s friend.
More importantly, we understand that Fernando constructs his expression of gender around
an oral dialectic with other men that is rooted in the narration of sexual practices and desires
that are described as violent and bloody. This narrative subjectifies the male as the butcher
entering his domain with a phallic knife and anonymizes the woman as a simple piece of
meat in the “carnicería.” This epistemology of coitus is ontological to the homosocial bond
that is shared by Fernando, Bermúdez and others. It is founded on phallic, unredeeming
violence that ignores the penetratee‟s desires and subjectivity. This is noted in “las
atrocidades” (107) that Fernando shares with Celia in bed at night, which include an anecdote
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about the fishermen of Mombasa. These African men “subían a bordo los cuerpos
moribundos de los dugongos, unas vacas marinas con pechos de matrona, y fornicaban con
ellos hasta que las pobres bestias dejaban de existir. Era un sencillo coito anal […] con el
raro aliciente de que el animal, durante el acto, lanzaba unos gritos angustiosos que parecían
sollozos de mujer” (107-8). Sex within this group is limited to the violence exerted by the
self over a possessed and violated other.
Returning to Fernando‟s real expression of sexuality (versus the idealized paradigm
of butcher homosociality), we can see that he does not fully fall into the categorization of
butcher masculinity, as one could argue that he is latently homosexual due in part to his very
oral and visual sexuality (Lauer “La representación” 47). This conjecture of male desire
succeeds in portraying Fernando as a vulnerable, complex, and humanized representation of
male sexuality that does not necessarily conform to the Neanderthal archetypes of the Latin
male who is dressed up by the possessed phallus.53
This fragile, non-phallocentric nature is evidenced when Fernando eats another man‟s
semen from the cinnamon-garnished vagina of a prostitute, and when he kisses Julieta whose
mouth is coated with the ejaculate of a black, brutish taxi driver. These incidences, which are
intimately linked to the mouth as a (queering) site of sexual expression, are seemingly
contradicted when Fernando describes how Celia mounts his mouth after every visit she
makes to her father‟s house to take care of him. The protagonist‟s oral enjoyment is truncated
when “con más firmeza, la empujaba hacia atrás, la obligaba a retroceder, la ensartaba
furiosamente en su verdadero trono” (18).54 The male finds a need to emphasize his phallic
53
See Ilan Stavans‟s comments on the “Latin Phallus” in Chapter 1.
54
I resist to call this a moment of homosexual panic, as Fernando does not violently act out but instead firmly
reasserts his position of dominance.
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corporality and denies his own oral impulses, though in latter scenes of the novel he shows
an animalistic consumption-drive, wanting to devour his lover Julieta and to drink her urine.
The textual descriptions of cunilingus between Celia and Fernando subtly, yet quite
perversely, react to the lyrics of the bolero that titles the first chapter, “Burbujas de amor.”
The song narrates the yearning desire of a subject for his/her lover, who wants to “Pasar la
noche en vela / Mojado en ti.” The reasons for placing this bachata at the beginning of the
novel are elementary as Montero chooses a nondiegetic referent that explicates the
underlying tensions and desires in the narrative. The bachata as a sensual, body-clinging art,
after all is meant to be accompanied by “todas esas cosas salvajes y calientes” (88) that
constitute human desire. It is to note that the only character that is actively described as being
“mojado” is Fernando as he has a “rostro empapado” (18) after Celia spends a good fifteen
minutes “remando absorta” on top of his face (18). The contrasts between this initial
performance and the subsequent “placing on the throne” are highlighted when Fernando
dephallicizes his body by analogizing his face with the dead calm of the sea. He is not the
virile male who massacres the female, but is instead composed of a dismorphic,
desubjectified orifice that sexually pleasures Celia. His corporal body is desubjectified into
an anonymous, shape-shifting mass like the ocean as Celia rows on top of him.
Though Fernando strives to define himself away from the butcher mentality of the
homosocial, it is plain to see that the break is not as clearcut as criticism and critics would
lead one to believe. In those many encounters with his wife, where he haphazardly reassumes
his role as King (of the “carnicería”) by placing Celia on her throne, he finds a mark near her
breast that confirms his suspicions of her having an affair with Marianito, her father‟s cousin.
Reinforcing his interdependence on the homosocial, Fernando conjures a narrative of how
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Celia and Marianito engage in a repeated set of trysts that can only be intertextually inspired
by the sordid, yet serendipitous tales of sexual conquest shared amongst groups of men
and/or in commercial erotica.
This focus on orality is strengthened by Celia‟s diegetic singing of the titular bolero
in the chapter. La última noche que pasé contigo follows the intertextual model of the literary
OST though it is a two-sided album, with the boleros that title each chapter as Side A, and
the characters who pronounce the lyrics within the narrative as Side B.55 Celia repeats the
line “mojada en ti” several times, finishing with a languid “oooooh, mojada en ti” (27) that is
described by Fernando as being uncouth and off-key. He attempts a reversal of roles by
situating Celia within the aquarium that houses the lonesome subject in the lyrics of the
bolero, making her the fish that repeatedly exclaims “mojada en ti.” The opposite, however,
is not simply dissimilated by his narrative, but is put into tension by the recurring, routine
practice of her mounting him. Keeping this in mind, Celia‟s diegetic singing of the bolero
succeeds in decentering, or at least subverting, the phallic masculinity that is espoused by
Fernando (at times) and his homosocial group. The lyrical referent assumes an explicitly
mocking tone as it is the male character that is wetted by the female, either through her coital
mounting of his mouth, or by her wetting of his lips with her finger that tastes of “marisco
antiguo” (23).
The lyrical referent being sung from the mouth of a character recounts the idea of the
mouth as a site of queering discursivity. The subversion of Fernando‟s “massacring”
masculinity underlines his interdependence on the phallic homosocial. The homosocial
55
My musical metaphor is of course in reference to audio cassettes and not modern digital recording
technology, which in many ways erased the traditional practice of placing more commercial and popular tracks
on Side A and demoted “filler” tracks on Side B. In the age of being able to download individual songs instead
of whole albums, the concept of a Side has grown irrelevant, leading some popular bands and singers to release
B-side compilations for the true fan.
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group, we must remember, is kept alive by implicit, unseen, and changing tangents of desire
between male subjects and a mediating female. Sedgwick‟s triangulations of desire into a
social model of power are reliant on the non-expression of desire between men. The bolero
sang by Celia, however, seems to deliver the initial blow in defacing the façade that is
Fernando‟s carnal brand of masculinity. He is further defrocked when he recounts his
encounter with a prostitute who mixes cinnamon powder with talcum. The lady asks him to
leave as she attends to another customer, a man who spurns envy and violence in the
awaiting Fernando when he brushes off the cinnamon-laced powder from his clothing after
completing his business with the prostitute. The male protagonist engages in what can be
termed as oral rape when he barges in on the prostitute and saturates her genitals with the
cinnamon powder before tasting her. Quite ironically, the violence he feels towards the other
gentlemen is vicariously first expressed through the use of the mouth in oral sex and not
through the phallic, violent thrusts of the homosocial butcher entering the “carnicería.”
The dialectic between belonging to and deviating from the homosocial‟s narrative is
not a simple issue of black and white, as it is complicated by Fernando‟s description of the
prostitute‟s taste: “Adentro sabía amargo, sabía de cerca a concha triturada, y sabía
lejanamente, cada vez más lejanamente, a la canela” (30). He reassumes Bermúdez‟s
discourse, only to have the prostitute reveal that he had swallowed “la leche de otro hombre”
(31). The ties that bind the homosocial are momentarily severed by Fernando as he engages
in a passive, not violent or phallic, expression of his own homosocial desire. This act of
transgression takes on a nostalgic, uncanny tone when he describes his ambiguous
relationship with cinnamon: “me repugnaba algunas veces, y había veces en que amanecía
con un deseo brutal de saborearla” (31).
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The character‟s belonging to the homosocial, which is to say not the group that is
“mojado” in the song, is further complicated when he meets the mature Julieta. She notices
his hands rubbing suntan lotion on her body and he makes a direct effort to “hacerlas parecer
más fuertes y laboriosas, más hábiles y despiadadas, es decir, más temibles” (34). Though the
diegetically enunciated lyrical intertext characterizes a queering of the male body, it shows
signs of fighting this process, of somehow reaffirming its knife-like, Latin phallus. Though
critics argue that it is a female author that allows for a problematization of male sexuality in
erotic fiction, I argue that this is only truly allowed when the heterosexual male narrative
voice is dialogically engaged with the musical intertext, as a portal that elevates any
discussions of sexuality above and beyond the limits of prose.
Popular song, as part of a diegetically sung OST, decenters the homosociallydependent Carlos in Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero. Lemebel‟s narrative, however,
lacks the male countervoice to the queering erotics of the song. The one exception, however,
occurs when imbued with a poetics of inebriation, the rebel Carlos takes over the narrative as
his ventriloquist voice explains a long-kept secret of homoerotic frolicking at the banks of a
river with another youth who ejaculates onto his leg. Tengo miedo torero manages to queer
and decenter virile masculinity through song, but it is only through an exchange in the
control of the narrative voice, in this case brought about by copious amounts of pisco, that
Lemebel succeeds in exposing heternormative masculinity as a construct that is dependent on
its ties to the homosocial, which are in turn woven by a reliance on oral narratives.
The converse, which is to say the sexual reliance on orality, however, has an opposite
effect within the homosocial. The process of sexualized eating queers the male‟s belonging to
the group, as the couple and Julieta eat sushi at a local restaurant in one of the cruise stops.
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Celia assumes the active, violent role that she occupies when mounting Fernando by cajoling
the culinarily conservative Julieta to try the Japanese delicacy. Montero creates an
ephemeral, yet tangible triangle of desire between the two women and Fernando when he
joins in the sushi “no tanto por el apetito como por la necesidad de unirme al culto” (39). His
mouth becomes a site of seduction as he physically assimilates the raw mollusks in a slow
and sensual fashion that incites Julieta to caress his ankles with her feet. Fernando‟s oral
fixation alludes to the incident with the cinnamon powder and to his subjugation by the
rowing Celia over his face, both incidences that disassociate him from Bermúdez‟s butcher
masculinity. The text as narrated by Fernando, however, shows an awareness of this
deviation, as it reverts to the homosocial‟s animalization of the female body. Fernando
transmutes the genitalia with each piece of sushi offered to him, as the aoyagi becomes a
“vulva sonrosada, la cresta del clítoris sobresaliendo de su cojín de arroz, palpitando
intensamente bajo unos polvos misteriosos” (39-40), and as the torigai is described as “otra
vulva cercenada especialmente para mi exclusivo festín, otro clítoris latiente, esta vez pardo
y resbaloso” (40). The dead mollusk is not simply reimagined as genitalia, but is brought to
life as a pulsating organ of female sexuality. The “polvos misteriosos” reveal an unconscious
reference to the prostate and cinnamon-laced talc that constituted Fernando‟s first
documented deviance from butcher masculinity.
The role of the bolero in the process of constructing a gender identity in Fernando is
addressed further in the third chapter when he sings a few lines of “Negra consentida” to
Celia, as he reminisces about his adventures from the night of the restaurant. The song
conjures exotic visions of the Afro-Caribbean as a source of unrestrained, animalistic sexual
expression that is underlined by the mythically large African penis. Fernando wonders if
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Julieta wishes to “convertirse en una negra procaz, maquinadora, pervertida; una negra
devoradora de ardientes negros insaciables” (81). This metaphor connects the sung lyrics of
the bolero to the erotics of the text, as the description of Julieta as a carnivorous sexual
subject versus the equally subjectified insatiable negro is juxtaposed with the events of the
night before, where Julieta forces Fernando to perform oral sex on her. She removes his hold
on phallic penetration in their relations, and subjugates him to the objectified role of giving
her pleasure, akin to the pieces of meat that are massacred by the homosocial‟s butchering
paradigm of sex.
Julieta desubjectifies Fernando within the aesthetics of cunilingus by reversing the
narrated actions of the restaurant. She impregnates sushi/female genitalia with the butcher‟s
sexual power, as it is responsible for devouring and ingesting both of them the night before
and not vice versa. The consumer, which is to say the oral technician of the erotic act, is the
phantasmal, consumed object and not the purveyor of any form of agency, phallic or
otherwise, in the text.
The use of popular music in La última noche que pasé contigo is not simply limited to
the negotiation of masculinities in Fernando. It is captured as a narratological strategy by
Celia as she describes how she would masturbate during her engagement to Fernando,
listening to Lucho Gatica‟s rendition of “Amor, qué malo eres.” Montero problematizes
female desire by confronting the female masturbatory act as Celia relates how she begins to
touch herself: “No era exactamente que me masturbara, no era así, tan burdo, la expresión
exacta era „reconocerme‟” (103). The bolero is used as a parallel yet alternate discourse to
create a discourse that runs counter to heteronormative models of sexuality. As Jorge
Rosario-Vélez judges, “Celia, como la Catalina de Ángeles Mastretta en Arráncame la vida,
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invierte su prioridad de hija, esposa y madre por la de amante” (73).56 The critic continues his
study of the transgressive power of the bolero by citing examples from the epistolary lesbian
relationship, and from Celia‟s own necrophilic thoughts when she fellates Fernando. He
mixes examples of diegetic and structural referents of the bolero in his analysis to arrive at a
strong hypothesis: “Celia polemiza la apropiación del bolero como medio de enunciación de
estos deseos porque los sujetos carecen de la capacidad lingüística apropiada para articular lo
„salvaje y lo caliente‟” (68). The critic goes on to add that in the novel “el cuerpo femenino
emerge como ambrosia sin corresponder a la sexualidad reproductiva, mimética y de
acreditación cultural” (68).
The female body, therefore, becomes the site of erotic discursivity in the novel. But
do the limits of the body stop there, at the anatomic border between the female and the male?
The body in Montero‟s text is problematized beyond the reductionism of biological
attributes, as the bolero also serves as a means of problematicizing male sexuality, and how
its lyrics can mediate the many transgressions of Masculinity extant in the text.57
The examples of how Fernando dialogues with song to expose his own vulnerability
as a heterosexual male who partakes in “la sexualidad reproductiva, mimética y de
acreditación cultural” have been outlined in these pages. That being said, the character of
Agustín Conejo undergoes a similar process vis-à-vis music at the beginning of the chapter
56
The use of the bolero in Mastretta‟s novel allows for the novelistic emancipation of the female character from
the societal controls of patriarchy. Please see the works of Salvador Oropesa and Álvaro Salvador for further
analysis.
57
The critical void on this novel is akin to critical stance taken towards Cristina Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá
llorar, analyzed in Chapter 1 (See the section “Trafficking Masculinities”). Rivera Garza‟s novel is replete with
male characters who ponder their own heteronormative stands towards sexuality and their ties to the historically
hegemonic homosocial. Critics, however, have focused on the female body and the feminine as transgressive
entities in the novel, similar to Rosario-Vélez‟s argumentation in regards to Montero‟s La última noche que
pasé contigo. In another example, Sonia Valle engages the reader in a psychoanalytic reading, paying close
attention to the manifestations and incarnations of lesbian love and desire as rooted in the female body in the
novel.
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titled “Amor, qué malo eres.” Celia remembers how he comes to her one day after his shift at
the hospital in a shroud of mystery, wanting to share with her the two things that he has never
done sexually. He repeatedly swears her to secrecy, emphasizing that what they are going to
do “sería un secreto entre los dos, únicamente de él y [ella], un pacto que [debían] sellar con
sangre” (94). In what follows, Celia alludes to but never makes explicit both her sodomizing
him with a dildo, and her performing anilingus on the same point of entry into the male body.
Though Conejo lacks narrative control of the text, Montero creates a circumstance that is
inclusive of his dalliance into sexual expression that is not “reproduciva, mimética y de
acreditación cultural” (Rosario-Vélez 68). The author achieves this in part due to the
structuralizing referent of the bolero that speaks of rejection, lies, secrecy, and ultimately
estrangement between two lovers. It is through the referent of popular song that Conejo‟s
purported animalistic, domineering, butcher masculinity is revealed to be as vulnerable and
as polysemantic as Fernando‟s interdependency with the butcher homosocial.
The use of popular bolero music as an OST to La última noche que pasé contigo
promulgates a literary tradition in the Caribbean that began with authors attempting to
subvert dominant writings and writers. In keeping with this movement, Montero creates an
epistemology of desire and sexuality that emanates from the bolero, which cannot be found
within the linguistic constraints of narrative fiction. The writer‟s resourcefulness echoes
Judith Butler‟s thesis on the production and expression of desire. The critic argues that
“desire is manufactured and forbidden as a ritual symbolic gesture whereby the juridical
model exercises and consolidates its own power” (76). The idea of a juridical model,
however, confines the analysis of power to what is prohibited and held as taboo within the
system, without necessarily unmasking the actual operations of power, if the latter is to be
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understood under the model proposed by Foucault. Without delving, however, into a political
critique of Butler‟s assertion, we can still appreciate her putting into a dynamic the source
and perpetuator of desire. The legislative branch, so to speak, of this model is language as it
is socialized and permissive of certain desires and not others. The use of popular song in La
última noche que pasé contigo is therefore an exemplar of how this model is and can be
subverted, and how narrative fiction can engage in a representation of all that is taboo,
unsaid, and secret that unveils our own sexualities to be vulnerable, social, and phantasmic
constructs. Ultimately, the use of popular music in the text cements the notion that
masculinity as a gender expression and identity is not fixed or permanent in the many men
who roam Montero‟s Caribbean, but is instead a fluid, amobeous, and at times contradictory.
Soundtrack, Seduction, and Homosocial Dynamics in El huerto de mi amada.
Alfredo Bryce Echenique‟s El huerto de mi amada is the latest novel by an author
who began his literary career with the publication of Huerto cerrado (1968), but who did not
find fame until the publication of his second novel, Un mundo para Julius (1970), which
went on to be an international bestseller. Bryce Echenique has often been lumped together
with other writers of his generation under the commercially viable umbrella-term of the Latin
American boom, but he has resisted this association.58 The author, furthermore, has focused
58
Born in 1939, Bryce Echenique shares some similarities to another great Peruvian author, Mario Vargas Llosa
(1936). Their first novels were published in the 1960s (though Vargas Llosa publishes Los jefes, a collection of
stories in 1959), and have continued to write prolifically. In opposition to other writers of their generation, and
of their commercial/editorial grouping, the two Peruvians have managed to keep with the times in their fiction.
Vargas Llosa, for example, begins to explore the feminine world in his recent novels. His highly-acclaimed La
fiesta del Chivo, for example, is structured around textual strategies of trauma such as sudden flashbacks and
the meshing of a past traumatic incident with a superfluous contemporary occurrence. Bryce Echenique, on the
other hand, jokingly refers to psychoanalytic theories and methods of reading literature, when Carlitos and
Natalia attempt to psychoanalyze their own relationship. He ponders: “imagínate tú todo lo que se imaginarían
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his narratives on the class struggles faced in Peru and Latin America, as he attempts to
expose the machinations of gender, power, and race. In La amigdalitis de Tarzán (1999), for
example, he pens the struggles faced by an inter-class relationship between a Peruvian and a
Salvadorian. In an attempt to emphasize this point, César Ferreira observes, “Bryce es uno
de los grandes cronistas de la burguesía peruana […] todas las novelas de Bryce examinan la
psicología del sujeto desclasado, antiheróico y solitario” (75). He works in the tradition of
other Peruvian scribes who assign to the past an aura of privilege, lending a melancholic tone
to their narratives (Ortega 237). Though his earlier work fixates on Peruvian society, his
latter novels suggest a deterritorialization that has taken place in his narrative.
El huerto de mi amada is the story of an upper-class, Peruvian youth, Carlos Alegre,
who falls in love with the much older, and much fawned upon Natalia de Larrea. The two
escape his bourgeois house in Lima to hide from his family in her country estate, where they
are still harassed by his father and by the men who want to bed Natalia. The novel recounts
Carlitos‟s love for Natalia, his adventures with the social-ladder climbing Céspedes twins,
and his final reintegration into Limean society as he leaves Natalia and marries Melanie after
becoming a world-renowned doctor. Julio Ortega observes that El huerto de mi amada “es la
novela más novelesca de Bryce” (242), given that it eludes including the author within its
pages, and that its plot is purely novelistic. The critic goes on to comment that the novel “ha
adelgazado sus referentes a unos cuantos tópicos suficientes […] que se acompaña de pocos
personajes, perfilados por la comedia social esperpéntica y vodivilesca” (242). The novel
conforms to Ortega‟s labeling of a social comedy, as there is no room for tragedy within the
los discípulos de Freud, si se enteraran de esto” (212). They then suggest that their case is either characterized
by “gigantescos complejos recíprocos de Edipo” or “un caso de predestinación fálico-clitórico-vaginal” (212).
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diegesis and the amorous comedy ends with marriage, though Bryce Echenique‟s pairs are
distinctly alternate conjurations of what is permitted under the social code of power.
The novel begins with an epigraph by Felipe Pinglo (1899-1936), the father of
Peruvian música criolla and a grand proponent of the vals criollo. Pinglo‟s music has
continued to be popular in 20th-century Latin America as Los Panchos, Julio Jaramillo, Pedro
Infante, and Julio Iglesias are some of the talent that has continued to interpret his music.
Included in the epigraph are quotes from the French politican Antoine Barnave, the Duchess
of Angouleme, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the English playwright William
Shakespeare, and the French writer Marie-Henri Beyel, better known by his pseudonym
Stendhal. This gathering of eclectic thinkers and writers immediately following Pinglo‟s
lyrics suggest a redrawing of the social and temporal concerns of the novel. Bryce
Echenique‟s usage of Kant in the epigraph seems uncanny at first. Stendhal quotes the same
passage from Kant in the epigraph to the second part of his 1830 novel Le rouge et le noir,
which chronicles the life of a young man, Julien Sorel, who attempts to rise beyond his lowclass social upbringing, yet who ultimately fails at the hands of his own passions. The
placement of both quotes in the epigraph to El huerto de mi amada emphasizes the
intertextuality of Bryce Echenique‟s novel, as he ties his tale of 1950s Limean society with
the social travails of a 19th-century French youth. It, however, also dislocates the
comparative practice of intertextuality in this context as Bryce Echenique creates a physical
point of union between Stendhal and El huerto de mi amada, without calling to attention this
second layer of intertextuality.
The first layer of intertextuality, which is to say the primordial connection between
the greater works of these snippets in the epigraph and the novel itself, is territorialized in
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Pinglo‟s song. Though Bryce Echenique attempts a movement of the novel away from
national boundaries and across temporal frameworks, from the beginning he situates his
narrative alongside the parallel text of Pinglo‟s song that begins innocently with the lyrical
enunciator directing the listener towards the orchard of his lover where “un florestal que pone
tonos primaverales / en la quietud amable que los arbustos dan.” This seeming tranquility
that sets the tone for the beginning of the novel is shattered upon closer inspection of the
song. It is at the very beginning of the novel can we begin to note how music as a narrative
device in El huerto de mi amada conjures a topographic mapping that is intrinsic to an
understanding of how space functions in relation to personal markers of identity such as
gender.59
The second stanza begins with the subject lamenting “allá dónde he dejado lo mejor
de mi vida / ahí mis juramentos vagando han de flotar / porque ese ha sido el nido de
amargos sufrimientos / y allí la infame supo de mi amor renegar.” The suffering of the
subject is evidenced at the beginning of Carlitos‟s affair with Natalia. Immediately after their
dance, the other men attending the party scuffle with Carlitos, leaving him to flee with his
mature lover to her abode outside the power-constraints of Lima. The rest of Pinglo‟s song
continues with the theme of love lost and the lover spurned, which breaks with the
paradisiacal tone set in the first stanza of the song and in the first few pages of the novel. The
second stanza to Pinglo‟s tune succeeds in mapping out a textual terrain that establishes a
spatial referent to self, as it is far from the subject, in the huerto, does his happiness reside,
creating a before and after and/or system of causality that triggers a narrative exploration of
Carlitos‟s life.
59
The exploration of space and masculinity is performed in Chapter 4.
135
The congruency evidenced between the lyrical and the narrated text is akin to the use
of music in Mayra Montero‟s La última noche que pasé contigo, where the artifice of music
functions as a cinematic soundtrack that lends a pluralistic and auditory level of reception
and interpretation. But music plays a direct diegetic role in Bryce Echenique‟s novel, as it is
through Stanley Black‟s Siboney, and with a pinch of magical realism, that Carlitos becomes
enchanted by the sultry Natalia.60 With the first notes of the song, “Carlitos había sentido
algo sumamente extraño y conmovedor, explosivo y agradabilísimo, la sensación católica de
un misterio gozoso” (19). The songs ends as Carlitos leaves his room to find the source of the
music in the garden, though he continues to feel the song in his ears and head, suggesting that
though Black‟s version of the song has ended, a further intertextuality is still taking place.
This suggestion, of course, is supported by the varying levels of intertexts in the epigraph,
suggesting that each text has a series of hypertexts that run parallel and/or disjointed.
In the garden, Carlitos happens upon a party hosted by his father for his doctor
friends. The homosocial mass of doctors, combining their societal position and faith in
science, is placed in hegemonic position vis-à-vis other masculinities in the text. These men
are cultured, foreign (in the case of the Argentine cardiologist Dante Salieri), and wellspoken. As the divorcee Natalia and Carlitos get swept away by their passions, the
cardiologist destroys the Siboney record in anger, suggesting that the record and by extension
the song are mutually exclusive from the homosocial body that rules Lima. The name of the
chief antagonist is not fortuitous, as Bryce Echenique sustains the intertext with music by
alluding to Mozart‟s prime enemy, Antonio Salieri.
60
The tune was originally composed by the Cuban-Spanish composer Ernesto Lecuona, though Bryce
Echenique references Black‟s version of the song on the album Cuban Moonlight from 1969, temporally
placing the novel at least after this date, though the text suggests quite anachronically that the events narrated
occur in the late 1950s.
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The breaking of the record, furthermore, establishes separate social groups in the
novel that are defined by their own soundtracks. This is confirmed by Bryce Echenique‟s
notoriously polyphonic writing style, as during the dance between Natalia and Carlitos, the
author introduces a myriad of reflections, opinions and commentaries on the constructs of
power, race, and gender in Lima. The African male, for example, is eroticized, as in
Montero‟s La última noche que pasé contigo, as Natalia addresses him as “negro bandido
[…] negro atrevido, pero negro ricotón, sí, eso sí” (24). In a drunken rage, Salieri attacks
Carlitos, exclaiming that Natalia belongs to him. It is the musical framing of Carlitos and
Natalia‟s dance that creates a spatial exclusion of the other males in the vicinity which leads
to an armed conflict between the musically privileged male, which is to say Carlitos, and the
others. After a series of skirmishes Natalia and Carlitos manage to escape, with the latter
successfully fending off his four attackers. The attackers are composed of the Argentine
cardiologist, the doctors Alejandro Palacios and Jacinto Antúnez, and Fortunato Quiroga.
These men of science, as I argue in Chapter 1 in reference to Cristina Rivera Garza‟s
Nadie me verá llorar, are hierarchically superior to other masculinities due in part to their
role in developing the nation and promoting modernization. The last member, however, is
described in more detail than the doctors, as he is a “solterón de oro, senador ilustre, y primer
contribuyente de la república” (27). The cardiologist Salieri is the most spurned of the lot and
it seems that the others aid him simply to fulfill their function within the homosocial mass.
Salieri constantly calls Natalia “la puta” (35), negating her subjectivity as a person yet
reaffirming her position as an economic entity that is for sale and that can be bartered
between the members of the homosocial. The objectification of Natalia as a prostitute
conforms to the eugenic discourses of modernity promulgated by scientific modernists, as
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she is a divorcee and does not adhere to the nuclear model of family that metonymizes the
nation and power.
After their escape from Carlitos‟s house, and once in the confines of the huerto,
Natalia seeks medical help for Carlitos as he suffers several wounds from the skirmish with
the doctors and the senator. The reader pauses as the spatial referent activates schemata that
interrelates Pinglo‟s vals to the text, and we remember that the huerto is that other space that
characterizes a narrative of causality in the enunciator. The doctor who attends to Carlitos is
given a narrative voice as Bryce Echenique splices him into the polyphonics of the text. The
young doctor, who belongs to the hegemonic homosocial group of Salieri et al, reveals “yo
soy el primero que los vio meterse mano de lo lindo, porque besarse apenas podían con ese
labio del tal Carlitos” (56). The young doctor also partakes in the group‟s objectification of
and assumed ownership of women, as he describes how he saw her “escandalosamente
desnuda” (56). She is objectified due to her sexuality because she is only metaphorically
stripped of clothing, as the doctor explains: “hay que oírla cuando te suplica con esa voz tan
suya, genial, sensual, así de medio la‟o, y sexi […] porque entre una cosa y otra como si se
fuera quitando prenda tras prenda y hasta con música de ambiente” (56). It is the same tone
of sexualization and ownership that is expressed in Dante Salieri as he jealously tries to keep
her from fleeing with Carlitos. The young doctor who attends to Carlitos concludes his
description of Natalia by swearing “por lo más sagrado que se le pone a uno la verga al palo
con solo verla y escucharla” (57). To the man of science, the traditional patron to
phallocentric Masculinity, the penis permits his entrance into the hegemonic homosocial.
The educated, urban group gains its status of hegemony from a monopoly “de la vida
política y económica del país y la autoridad dentro de la familia” (Fuller 56). From this
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homosocial group that functions in contraposition to the effeminate, naïve, and infantile
figure of Carlitos, we note how Bryce Echenique engages in a dynamic of masculinities that
implicate society and the nation.61 Their belonging to the objective worlds of science and law
is fundamental to their masculinity, as Norma Fuller notes, “el trabajo es el eje fundamental
de la identidad masculina adulta” (64). It is this association that I find pertinent in reading a
contemporary politics of masculinity in these fictions, as there is a setting up and subsequent
challenge of the powers of modernity/patriarchy that forces the reader to rethink the
existence of masculinity as a non-universal and plural expression.
The political institution is explicitly involved in El huerto de mi amada as Fortunato
Quiroga becomes the country‟s president. His office is composed of “[una] elegancia
suprema. Muebles franceses. Mucho oro y mucha plata por todas partes. Lámparas
maravillosas con las bombillas más poderosas del mundo” (64). A tracing of the lines of
power that emanate from Quiroga connect him explicitly with the homosocial mass that is
made hegemonic in part due to his position as president. After sitting at his presidential desk
for the first time, he announces that he will not work until Lucas, his henchman, kills “la
parejita esa” (64). From this we can surmise two things. First, that hegemonic masculinity as
embodied by this specific, historical group acknowledges and eliminates challengers.
Secondly, the paralysis to function faced by the hegemonic suggests that the challenger,
Carlitos, in this situation is more than an oppositional entity.
Focusing on the behaviors exhibited by Dante Salieri and the young doctor, it is
evident that hegemonic masculinity is not only hegemonic due to a system of policies and
strategies that control women, but also due to an objectification of the female body and
61
Please see the analysis of Cristina Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar in Chapter 2 (“Trafficking
Masculinities”).
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female sexuality. The homosocial group‟s overblown reaction to the couple‟s elopement can
be explained by the removal of the female, or the object of trade, from the intra-hegemonic
market of desire that Eve Sedgwick theorizes in Between Men: English Literature and Male
Homosocial Desire. The homosocial market of desire, more importantly, is spatially outside
the diegetic referents of music in the text. First, the lines of desire that commoditize women
are excluded from the diegetic bubble created by the song Siboney that serenades the two
lovers away from Salieri and his group. We then note how the spatial elopement to the huerto
that is central to Pinglo‟s intertext succeeds in disassociating Carlitos and Natalia from the
political and economic center of Lima, which is invariably controlled by the homosocial.
Basing her ideas on the earlier work by René Girard, Sedgwick further argues that the
expression of desire within the homosocial group is often through the use of violence (176),
which corroborates Quiroga‟s hiring of a hitman to kill Natalia and Carlitos. The statesman
instructs Lucas: “métale todos los plomazos que pueda, en mi nombre. A ella, en cambio, un
solo balazo, y en el corazón” (64). The use of violence as a mediating language between the
members of the homosocial is necessary as the bonds that unite men, which is to say the
latent threads of homosexual desire, cannot be specified or acknowledged. Violence,
therefore, becomes the de facto language of a group that cannot verbalize their own
transgressive desires. We note the extent to which the female is objectified when Quiroga
warns his henchman: “como me la desfigure o algo así, lo mando colgar de los huevos” (64).
Natalia‟s face is important as Quiroga “quier[e] estar en ese entierro y contemplar por última
vez ese rostro maravilloso. Y además quier[e] darle el único beso de toda [su] puta vida”
(65).
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This group of men in El huerto de mi amada is importantly situated in, and
ontological to the urban center of Lima (away from Pinglo‟s huerto) that seems to diffuse
into every voice of the narrative. Their space is ontological to their own selves, so much so
that immediately after Natalia and Carlitos make their escape, Salieri repeatedly calls her a
whore, “como si empezara a despertar de la peor pesadilla de su vida y estuviese
completamente solo y muy adolorido en medio de un hermoso jardín” (35).62 The non-city is
a hellish proposition, as Salieri quickly interjects, “pensar que pude haber tomado el avión de
regreso a Buenos Aires esta noche… La puta…” (35). The city is left behind in the narrative,
as in their escape to the huerto, Natalia observes:
Atrás habían ido quedando barrios enteros, distritos como San Isidro, Miraflores,
Barranco, ahora que ya estaban llegando a Chorrillos y torcían nuevamente, en
dirección a Surco. Ahí se acababa la ciudad de Lima y empezaban las haciendas y la
carretera al sur…La idea le encantaba, le parecía simbólica: los distritos y barrios
residenciales en los que vivía toda aquella gente, todo aquel mundo en el que había
pasado los peores años de su vida, siempre juzgada, criticada, envidiada, tan solo por
ser quien era y poseer lo que poseía, y por ser Hermosa, también, para qué negarlo, si
es parte de la realidad y del problema, parte muy importante, además; esos malditos
San Isidros y Miraflores, y qué sé yo, iban quedando atrás. (39)
The spatial trajectory in the narrative towards the non-city is preceded by a discussion on
music, as Carlitos casually calls Natalia‟s home “el huerto de mi amada” (39). She informs
him that the song is an old vals criollo, the same song that appears in the novel‟s epigraph.
Carlitos also wants to listen to Siboney when they get to the house, calling it “nuestra
canción” (39), or more importantly, a lyrical testament to their usurpation of the homosocial.
It is by reference to Pinglo‟s song that Natalia comes to ponder the power structures extant in
the city. In the same regard, the reference to Siboney and her new affair with Carlitos triggers
a memory of her marriage to “un hombre tan brutal y celoso, tan lleno de prejuicios, tan
62
See Norma Fuller‟s chapter on masculinities in urban centers in Peru (Hombres e identidades de género:
Investigaciones desde América Latina). Fuller‟s sociological study will be critical to the analysis of the
relationship between space and masculinities in Chapter 3.
141
acomplejado, tan braguetero, y todo para que su única hija naciera muerta y aquel
sinvergüenza se largara con otra mujer y una buena parte de su dinero” (39-40). We can see
that music triggers a pondering of gender that is unavoidably leashed to a discussion of
Peruvian masculinities. On the one hand, music functions as an intertext in the escape from
hegemonic urban men who use violence to dominate and own women. On the other hand,
music engages the development of the subordinate masculinity of Carlitos as he embarks on a
process of maturation and conflict with the hegemonic referent to his own gender
identification.
By resorting to music as a narrative trigger, the author arranges a necessary
pondering of the title to Pinglo‟s song and the novel, which is the point of meeting in these
intertextualities. As they approach the country house, Natalia asks Carlitos if he knows what
the idiomatic “llevarse a alguien al huerto” means. She goes on to explain that “llevarse a
alguien al huerto quiere decir engañar a alguien. Y, actualmente, mucha gente usa la
expresión solo con el sentido de llevarse a alguien a la cama con engaños” (40). Carlitos‟s
response is unsurprising, as he exalts her: “dame el huerto, Natalia. Todo el huerto que
puedas” (40). If we were to read intertextually, the change that is noted between the first
stanza and the subsequent verses in Pinglo‟s song comes into play in this scene, as Natalia
suggests that the huerto is not as idyllic as it may first seem. The spatial referent of the
huerto that is brought into being in the first stanza is established in the novel as Natalia hopes
that “Lima nos olvide” (41), thereby distancing the events and characters of the huerto from
the Masculine cityscape.
Paradoxically, the two characters engage in a romantic and carnal relationship that
has them recolonizing the city with their kisses and trysts. It is also in the city that Carlitos
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meets his future wife, Melanie. Carlitos‟s subordinate masculinity comes back to Lima and
begins to study medicine, which is of course the profession of the old hegemonic group that
loses its power seemingly from one day to the next in a narrative that bends temporalities.
The old locus of power is challenged and subordinated by Rudecindo Quispe Zapata, a man
with indigenous roots from the province whose pedigree is unclear: “nadie sabía muy bien de
dónde había salido […] [ni] si terminó su secundaria, si realizó algún estudio superior […] no
era miembro del Club Nacional […] tampoco había viajado a Europa en el Reina del
Pacífico” (230).63
Keeping in mind the new political tone of the capital, we observe how Carlitos‟s once
subordinate and rejected masculinity has now become a competing strain within the
metropolis. He does not assume the stranglehold that his father‟s generation had over public
institutions as his stay in Lima is cut short by the rise of Quispe Zapata who metonymically
represents the political, economic and social changes produced in Peru at the end of the
1960s. Quispe Zapata is a new political player in Bryce Echenique‟s Lima, though scorned
by the members of the old guard. His rise to fame and power leaves the scientific homosocial
incredulous as he neither belongs to the old aristocracy, nor is he educated. Bryce
Echenique‟s text coincides with the democratic rule of Fernando Belaúnde Terry and with
the military coup by General Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1968. The former represents in many
regards the elite, European, and educated class that the Alegre family belongs to, as he was
63
The inclusion of this indigenous character in the novel highlights the problematic of race and power that
Bryce Echenique attempts to illustrate throughout his literary production. El huerto de mi amada is rife with
characters, dialogues and descriptions that unearth the plight of the cholo in Peruvian society as he seeks a place
of belonging in the urban centers of power. For a brief introduction see Jorge Bruce‟s excellent psychoanalytic
study of Peruvian society in Nos habíamos choleado tanto: Psicoanálisis y racismo (2007), including the
illuminating epigraph by Vargas Llosa, who argues that racism in Peru “nace de un yo recóndito y ciego a la
razón, se mama con la leche materna y empieza a formalizarse desde los primeros vagidos y balbuceos del
peruano” (5).
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responsible for establishing the Banco de la Nación and for developing infrastructure during
his political tenure as president.64 These centralizing factors, in turn, create a centrifugal
effect that augments the position of the capital vis-à-vis the institutions of power occupied by
the hegemonic homosocial, which is to say the textual space that is differentiated in the vals‟s
lyrics.
The marking of space within the novel through popular music creates a sense of
silence and vacuum in the descriptions of Lima that Bryce Echenique‟s characters chronicle,
as music only appears as a reference to the amorous philanderings of Carlitos and Natalia
when they visit the center. The rest of the city, including its affluent neighborhoods and
plazas are textually built around an auditory void that disarticulates Lima as a point of
identity or topographic referent to the placement of the novel‟s two protagonists. Space, after
all, is only defined by the lyrical huerto and everything else that is around it, which is
necessarily an ontological antonym of its non-centered positioning vis-à-vis the city. The
lack of lyrical textualities within and in reference to the city as a dialogic space, however,
points towards a narrative obsession with history and self in Bryce Echenique, as his pages
are replete with allegoric and masked references to Peruvian history, evoking the
melancholic tone that Julio Ortega reads in El huerto de mi amada.
The 1960s in Peru, following a larger trend seen on the continent, are also
characterized by the rise of Marxist revolutionary guerrillas, such as the Movimiento de
Izquierda Revolucionaria, which later splintered into the Partido Revolucionario Socialista
and the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru. These groups were responsible for the
64
Belaúnde‟s presidency was preceded by the democratically elected government of Manuel Prado Ugarteche,
who held office from 1957 to 1962. He too belonged to a wealthy, conservative, and patriarchal family. The
presidencies of Belaúnde and Prado were interrupted by a short military regime that lasted from July 1962 to the
same month of the following year.
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proliferation of guerrilla-style protests and violence in the country, which would serve as a
harbinger for the Partido Comunista del Perú, more popularly known as Sendero Luminoso.
Their missions and manifestos advocate for greater democracy and transparency, and for an
equitative redistribution of national resources that facilitate the reintegration of indigenous
and lower classes into society. The figure of Rudecindo Quispe Zapata, as coming from a
poor, non-European heritage, can be read as a fictive pastiche of Juan Velasco Alvarado who
led a left-leaning military government after staging a coup against Belaúnde in 1963.
The old guard is estranged from Lima by these changes, as Carlitos‟s father closes his
practice and moves the family to San Francisco in the United States. Carlitos and Natalia are
also displaced as they live the next seven years in Paris, where Carlitos becomes a prizewinning researcher and doctor. The shift away from the metropolis resonates in Carlitos‟s
masculinity, as he is not a power-wielding social phallus like his father and Dr. Dante Salieri.
Carlitos, instead, is described as being an absentminded scientist. But this personal
characterization reflects a larger change in the position of power and authority held by the
European man of science and letters that is metonymized by the homosocial group of Alegre,
Salieri, Quiroga, et al. This group loses its power due to a “democratización de los valores”
(Fuller 56) and changes in the political climate.
The relationship between Carlitos and Natalia is also affected by time as she begins to
feel inadequate and too old to be with him. If Siboney triggered their love, then it is its
replacement that cements the end of their relationship. While attending a conference in
Baltimore, Carlitos, now known as Carlos Alegre, is arrested for leaving the premises with a
radio belonging to the dormitory in which he is staying. The young Carlitos who was
entranced by the maracas of Siboney is now enthralled by Ludwig Van Beethoven‟s Seventh
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Symphony, a piece known for its usage of an Austrian hymn, and for its rhythmic balance.
After being arrested and then cleared by the police, we learn that he has similarly taken
radios in Munich and Zurich, as though his person is lost without an accompanying classical
soundtrack.
Continuing to connect musical and narrative texts, we observe how Carlitos loses his
relationship with Natalia as she undergoes a crisis of affection. As his plane lands in Paris
after a trip abroad, “Natalia de Larrea hace el amor frenéticamente con un muchacho casi
treinta años menor que ella. Y que se joda Carlitos, al ver que esta vieja de eme todavía los
puede encontrar mucho menores que él” (279). Their affair comes to a crescendo when
Natalia throws him out of the house and claims to hate him. Recovering in hospital, Carlos is
reunited with the young Melanie Vélez Sarsfield, a girl he tutored while in medical school.
She is the polar opposite to Natalia, and after marrying her, the older woman comments: “yo
siempre dije que Carlitos terminaría casándose con un hombre” (286), bringing to a fore the
male‟s complete reterritorialization into the spatial center of power, and = the matrices of
masculinity that traditionally hold the woman (and not a man as wife) as objects of power,
pride, and prestige.
Bryce Echenique‟s text is symphonically plural and historically bound to the social
and political changes and realities experienced by Peruvian society in the second half of the
20th century. Though he has traditionally been lumped together with the writers of the boom,
due in part to the date of publication of his first book and to his own age, Bryce Echenique‟s
narrative has evolved into the 21st century. It is this spatial movement away from the polis
and away from the power structures of hegemonic masculinity, as championed by the
scientific/political homosocial, which permits a realignment of the masculinities extant in the
146
text. This realignment, in turn, forces a discussion of the changes experienced in Peru in the
1960s and beyond, as Julio Ortega adds:
Aunque esta fábula de amor libre está enmarcada en el humor de su comedia social de
época, no deja de comunicar la irracionalidad de la razón social peruana y
latinoamericana. En estos años en que la pobreza de todo orden ha afligido las
libertades del sujeto entre la violencia racista, le ferocidad machista y la corrupción
naturalizada, nuestras sociedades han regresado a la cruda realidad de estratificación
de clase, a su largo vicio antimoderno. Este mapa de clases declara los límites de la
democratización en una América Latina cuya vida cotidiana sufre varias regresiones
autoritarias. El huerto de mi amada, tras su juego gentil, no deja de traducir este
sentimiento de los límites de la sociabilidad. (244)
Between Rock and a Hard Place: Gender in Franz Galich‟s Managua.
From a schematic standpoint, the use of music in El huerto de mi amada creates a
diegetic topography of masculinities that enables the author to explore further questions of
Peruvian identity and history, as he uses traditional Latin American music to root his pages
within a national imaginary. The other novels studied in this chapter represent historical
and/or deterritorialized diegeses, and as such employ music within an impermeable space
that houses the many matrices of power, gender and race extant in their texts. But what
happens when this constraint is removed, and the narrative is rooted in the present, within a
tangible social reality? What becomes of this narratological strategy when the text reacts to
an increasingly globalized world where jumping borders is an everyday reality and necessity?
Keeping this fluidity of influences in mind, especially when it comes to the
movement of popular culture and its artifacts, Beatriz Cortez argues that “durante la segunda
mitad del siglo veinte y a medida que se fueron desarrollando los procesos revolucionarios en
Centroamérica, la música pasó a desempeñar un papel importante en la resistencia a los
procesos colonizadores de la música popular norteamericana, así como también en el reto a la
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construcción de la identidad nacional.” The critic, of course, keeps in mind the social
changes that occur in countries such as Nicaragua in the 1990s after the failure of socialist
regimes and policies.65 These changes are reflected in the novelistic production from the
region, as Elizabeth Ugarte notes:
El consumismo es presentado como fenómeno devorador de la identidad que se
acrecienta en Nicaragua en la década de los noventa con el fracaso del proyecto
socialista impulsado por la revolución de 1979. Y la violencia como la expresión
simbólica de la alienación y marginación, producto de la desocupación y pobreza
extrema, uno de los grandes problemas que enfrenta el espacio social urbano de
Managua ante la falta de alternativas.
From this tumultuous period of political ennui and social malaise, a border-hopping author
takes up the task of understanding and representing Central American society with the ashes
of the sociopolitical revolutions of the 1970s. Born in Guatemala, Franz Galich spends the
greater part of his life living and working in neighboring Nicaragua. He is, par excellence, an
advocate of the notion of there existing a transnational literature and identity of the postMacondo literary scape, as his own textual and critical production has grown in scope. His
first novel, Huracán corazón del cielo (1995) deals with the 1976 earthquake that wrecked
geological and social havoc in Guatemala as it unearthed the many fissures between social
groups and hierarchies in the country. His latter work, including Managua Salsa City
(¡Devórame otra vez!) (1999) and Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera), attempts a
portrait of a Nicaraguan society that is bullet-riddled by the armed conflict between the
Sandinista government and the Contra fighters. The author describes his work as one not
bound by physical borders, opining that “de alguna forma ya me he integrado al proceso
productivo nicaragüense pero prefiero hablar en términos generales de un proyecto
centroamericano, es decir de una literatura centroamericana” (Martínez Sánchez).
65
Please see the section “Commoditizing Resources” in Chapter 2 for a more detailed overview of Nicaragua‟s
politico-economic climate in the 1990s.
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Aside from writing short stories and novels, Galich is an avid social commentator. He
places his work within “tiempos de la cólera neoliberal” (“Tandas”), and writes keeping in
mind the migratory nature of literature and culture in the late 20th and early 21st century.66 In
the pages to follow, I focus on his last novel and its incorporation of contemporary musical
intertexts as diegetic referents vis-à-vis the constructs of gender, and as extratextual entities
that negotiate with the author‟s own concerns of the creation of a regional identity against the
colonizing cultural waves coming from the North.
As noted from the title, Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera) differs from the
other works studied and mentioned in this chapter, as it incorporates contemporary,
globalized popular music and not traditional Latin tunes. The novel is the immediate sequel
to Managua Salsa City (¡Devórame otra vez!), which recounts the meeting of the prostitute,
La Guajira, with the lower-class, ex-military Pancho Rana. An analysis of Y te diré quién
eres can only be contextualized by an initial probe into the role of music and gender in
Managua Salsa City, as the latter novel takes as an axiom the diegesis of Rana and La
Guajira.
This earlier text sets in motion an inquiry into the relationship between modernity and
masculinities, as it weaves a spider‟s web of male characters, factions, and political interests,
with La Guajira sitting in the middle as the black widow spider that controls the fate of the
many men in her life. She is a prostitute and the head of a band of conmen who operate out
of a taxi. Her prey/client, Pancho Rana, is the chauffeur of a rich family that has left their
66
Born Franz Galich Mazariegos, the author dies in Managua in February of 2007, not quite a year after
publishing his last novel Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera). This novel, along with its antecedent, is
meant to comprise the first half of a Central American quartet of novels dealing with the social unrest in the
region. Unfortunately, Galich‟s work is unfinished, and the use of music in the two remaining novels can only
be speculated. The void in critical voices on the author is also surprising, as aside from a few newspaper articles
and web postings, there is hardly any examination of his work from outside the literary circles of Guatemala
and Nicaragua.
149
house to their employee as they travel to Miami on vacation. La Guajira and Rana meet at La
Piñata, a popular nightspot in Managua where, hiding their true identities, the two become
enveloped in a passionate game of seduction, dance and music that leads them to Rana‟s
house, where a shootout ensues between him, the conmen, and two other opportunistic male
assailants with designs of robbing the house.
Managua Salsa City (¡Devórame otra vez!) plays out through the desires felt by the
two protagonists as they trade control of their sexuality and of the text‟s narrative voice.
Galich employs what Misha Kokotovic calls a “popular, oral style – reminiscent of
testimonio – in which both the narrator and the characters express themselves” (20). The
novel is set in a dark and somber Managua that is controlled by the Devil at night. Galich‟s
capital is intimately connected to sex, as its heat emanates from a collection of multiple,
unseen vaginas (1). It is a dark city that evokes disillusionment with the politics of the last
quarter of the 20th century. The recurrence to mythical, supernatural conceptions of good and
evil in Galich can be read in context with a larger trend in Latin American fiction. Mary
Louise Pratt suggests that free-market neoliberalism has produced a process of
demodernization in Latin America. She argues that through socially exclusionary practices,
large portions of the continent‟s population have faced a regression in quality of life. This
process of modernization, which in reality has had effects quite contrary to the term, has led
many to discredit rational and scientific belief systems in exchange for traditional, and
sometimes supernatural, belief paradigms to explain the reality of neoliberal capitalism. The
narrator summarizes this history in a fable-like manner, commenting:
Pero lo peor de todo es que después del terremoto se creyó que Dios podía ganar y
finalmente volvió a perder y así seguirá pasando hasta el final de los siglos, donde
Dios tal vez logre vencer al Diablo, pero para mientras, aquí en el infierno, digo
Managua, todo sigue igual: los capotes piderreales y huelepega, los cochones y las
150
putas, los chivos y los políticos, los ladrones y los políticos (que son lo mismo que los
políticos, sean sandináis los liberáis o conservaduráis, cristianáis o cualquiermierdáis,
jueputas socios del Diablo porque son la misma chochada). (2)
Kokotovic adds that “indeed, neoliberal, free-market capitalism in Nicaragua comes in for a
scathing critique as the novel examines the tragically violent outcome of the unbridled
pursuit of narrow individual interests” (22). These narrow individual interests are observed in
the male bodies in Galich‟s text that make money and social position their driving forces,
above the libidinal impulses of sex, as one of La Guajira‟s henchmen notes that “era más
importante la alianza económica” (45).
This consumerist culture is further reflected in the textual depictions of the body, as
Managua Salsa City (¡Devórame otra vez!) succeeds in animalizing and commoditizing male
and female specimens. The examples of the animalized male abound: La Guajira‟s henchmen
display the pack-mentality of wolves; Pancho‟s last name is Rana; the lone male assailant
who survives the final shootout is described as being rat-faced.The female body is similarly
objectified by a male gaze as Rana and others deconstruct the curves and mounds of the
female form according to their own personal desires.
Music is intrinsic to the mapping of these matrices of bodies, economies, and gender
in the text, as popular salsa music provides the OST to the exposition of masculine desire
through a detailed and ritualistic courtship that passes between Pancho and La Guajira.67 This
courtship involves a lyrical dynamism (created by Galich‟s strong regionalist diction) and a
67
For an excellent reference on the genesis, history and genealogy of this musical genre, see Lise Waxer‟s
anthology Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, 2002. Wexer argues
that the spread of salsa in the 1970s across Latin America, and in the 1980s and 90s to Europe, Japan and Africa
can be thought of in terms not unlike the shift made away from boom literature in Latin America. The critic
notes that “though salsa‟s diffusion to these places does not quite fall into the category of globalization along
the lines of McDonald‟s, MTV, Microsoft, and Michael Jackson, the distinction between „transnational‟ (cutting
across national boundaries) and „global‟ (truly worldwide) is not always clear in salsa‟s case” (8). Wexer
continues this archaeology mapping of the genre by adding that only with the aid of the Big Five recording
companies such as Sony and BMG in the 1990s salsa truly achieves a globalized outreach.
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dancing ritual that is almost theatric in its performance and reliance on a set of preestablished gender cues. The male negotiates the female‟s body to the tune of salsa in an
attempt to cajole and capture her in his libidinal trap; though in reality La Guajira is also
laying a trap for Pancho in the form of her waiting henchmen.
Their dance is cinematically choreographed to the diegetic playing of the salsa tune
“Devórame otra vez.” The lyrics to the song suggest an experiential approximation to
sexuality that is sensual in its failure to establish a strict ontological base for desire as the
bodies within the song are systematically devoured. The lyrics focus on the eating of the
singing subject in a passion-induced consensual cannibalism:
Devórame otra vez, ven devórame otra vez,
Ven castígame con tus deseos más
Que mi amor lo guardé para ti
Ay ven devórame otra vez,
Ven devórame otra vez
Que la boca me sabe a tu cuerpo
Desesperan mis ganas por ti.
The first verses of the song introduce the courtship between Rana and La Guajira, though
Galich‟s transcription of the lyrics are inaccurate, suggesting that the words printed are
indicative of diegetic singing and not an overlaying OST track that ambients the narrative.
The text is polyphonic as it meshes Pancho Rana‟s thoughts with song lyrics, suggesting that
he mindlessly verbalizes popular songs within the diegesis. By assigning the utterance of the
title song to Pancho, we can surmise that by asking to be sexually consumed, the male
subject loses the phallic power of sexual dominance over the female. The position of subject
is also held by La Guajira as she sings a few verses from the song at the moment they begin
their interactions, suggesting that she too engages in a diegetic sacrifice to a cannibalizing
lover. But the desecration of the body is not one-way in the song; the subject is also guilty of
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consuming the other, as his/her mouth tastes of the lover. Note the emphasis on the mouth as
a corporal site of enunciation in the text, as it is through the mouth that the hegemonic status
of masculinity can be challenged and subordinated. The mouth and not the vagina or anus is
the receiver of male desire in Managua Salsa City (¡Devórame otra vez!), as La Guajira
refers to her own orifices as “mis tres bocas” (37).
Like other texts written in fin-du-siècle Latin America, Managua Salsa City
(¡Devórame otra vez!) evidences a textual effort to represent and characterize masculinities
as representations of greater influences and components extant in contemporary societies. By
using the automobile as a modern representation of the subject, Galich‟s men drive Toyotas
and Ladas. The latter makes reference to the inflow of foreign goods and multinational
companies into Nicaragua, while the latter, of course, harkens to the left-leaning days of the
nation‟s politics during the Cold War. These men assume violence to be ontological, as
Pancho comments: “por un lado le molestaba, pero por otro le gustaba porque no solo lo
hacían recordar una época en la que se sentía poderoso con su Aka plegables, los magazines
y su Makarov, sino que le daba cierta confianza” (28). In another example of how Galich
writes masculinities into the text, the two assailants who join the onslaught on Rana‟s
temporary residence are representative of a hybridized, Spanglish-speaking masculinity that
has lived in the United States. By imbuing this last spatial referent as the origin of predatory
economic policy, the two assailants are described to be animal-like, immoral, criminal lowlives with the sole aim of raping La Guajira and robbing Pancho. It is through simple
material referents that the author creates a system of competing and alternating masculinities
that compete for control over the lost city space, the remnant of neoliberalism.
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Just as a theatre of reconciliation is established between the competing factions, the
novel ends in bloodshed and mayhem as La Guajira‟s gang is decimated and Pancho is taken
for dead. The sun begins to rise over Managua as the prostitute and the rat-faced assailant
leave on a motorcycle. An extrapolation of the sexualized couple onto the imagining of the
nation is not out of place in these pages, as Galich‟s text suggests a bleak future for the
region.68 Managua Salsa City (¡Devórame otra vez!) points towards a future composed of an
opportunistic prostitute who changes her alliances depending on her company and a rat-faced
invader from the North who is the epitome of self-serving, consumerist neoliberalism.
Written as a sequel, but perhaps also as a response to Managua Salsa City
(¡Devórame otra vez!), Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera) picks up the aftermaths of
the shootout and the escape of La Guajira with El Cara de Ratón. Pancho Rana is found
close-to-death by the police who try to make some sense out of the attack. The novel
develops Rana‟s search for La Guajira across the region, involving the homosocial police,
headed by Captain Anastasio Cerna, and the homosocial press, led by Parménides Aguilar.
Though the first novel ends with an apparent respite as the Devil leaves the city with
68
The use of a sexual imaginary as a blueprint for national identity has been studied extensively, both from
Doris Sommer‟s heteronormative viewpoint and from alternative perspectives. Sexuality as a negative allegory
of nationhood has been used in the study of Puerto Rican literature. Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé notes “that unlike
those Latin American foundational texts that Doris Sommer has so passionately analyzed, Puerto Rican
canonical texts have rallied us and bound as through failure and impotence” (140). He further notes that there
exists in these texts “an impotence that has cunningly incited us to close ranks around the father, with righteous
indignation or with race” (141) and that “at the center of the author‟s paternal voice there‟s not a subject but an
abject: the monstrously mangled body of a „feminized‟ man that bears, like all figures of gender-crossing, the
marks of a „category of crisis,‟ of the impossibility of sustaining paternal hierarchies that the discourse of nation
identity both spectacularizes and condemns” (141). This frankenstinian model of a gendered nation is borne
from Cruz-Malavé‟s assertion that Puerto Rico exists in that “queer state of freedom within dependency, of
nation without nationhood” (140). It is also argued that Antonio S. Pedreira‟s novel Insularismo (1934) is the
founding text of 20th-century Puerto Rican letters; a text in which the nation‟s identity is codified in a failed
bildungsroman. This founding text when juxtaposed with Rodó‟s Ariel (1900) and Vasconcelos‟s La raza
cósmica (1925) demonstrates a lack of a “voz magistral” (150) or authorial voice that promotes an author‟s
“version of Latin-Americanness” (150). Pedreira‟s novel instead is characterized by a conspicuous emptiness
and lack of inspiration. When Rodó succeeds in galvanizing the continent‟s youth, Pedreira writes: “atentad al
divino Tesoro, pues el título más alto se puede convertir en mote” (174).
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daybreak, Galich reminds the reader that the disasters of war and neoliberalism are not subtle
phantasms that appear and disappear at the whim of the sun. Instead, we are presented with a
city where “el calor sube hasta el delirio y la gente camina como si acabaran de llegar al
Infierno” (7). By reverting to a mytho-poetic representation of reality, Galich underscores
Pratt‟s observation of consensus disillusionment with the status quo of modernity.
The narrative proceeds to summarize the events from the previous book with quick
cuts between scenes and the use of an occasional flashback or two to get the reader on pace
with the plot, marking a stark departure from the lyrical, baroque style of Managua Salsa
City (¡Devórame otra vez!). Aware of this change, Galich leaves the reader a note of caution:
“Cómplice lector, esta novela se puede leer de varias formas, huelga decirlo: como
documento histórico o sociológico. Pero la mejor forma es como si se tratara de una película
made in Hollywood” (6). By hinting at the possibility of a written text being read as a
sequence of celluloid film, the novel metaphysically encompasses the visual and aural
components of film. In doing so, Galich‟s words necessitate an intertextual reading of Y te
diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera) that keeps in constant reference the extraliterary
references to popular music.
The note does not stop there, but cajoles the reader to not “establecer relaciones,
semejanzas o comparaciones con países de América Latina, Asia, África” (6). The author‟s
attempts to deviate his text from a national referent are acutely and intentionally sabotaged in
the first sentence of Chapter 1, which opens with “en Managua, a las doce meridiano en
punto, el calor sube hasta el delirio y la gente camina como si acabaran de llegar al Infierno”
(7). This cheeky, puzzle-solving dialectic between author and reader, which is first
enunciated by the former, is evident in the title of the novel that begins with the response to
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the idiomatic expression “dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres.” This play on words is
picked up in a discussion on corruption amongst the police forces in various Central
American countries, with a journalist beginning the expression but not finishing it, forcing an
involved reading of the text that contradicts the author‟s note to not extrapolate fiction to
reality. In another scene, one of Pancho‟s acquaintances, El Brujo, spews a series of
idiomatic phrases, including “más vale pájaro en mano que cien volando” (177). From the
beginning, before the reader delves into the cinematic depiction of late 20th-century Central
America, Galich stacks the deck in favor of an intertextual, fill-in-the-blanks hermeneutics of
Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera).
The reference in the introductory note to the North American media goliath brings to
mind the idea of cultural imperialism as a by-product of neoliberal policy.69 Commenting on
the operations of the North American music industry, Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights
observe that:
This infrastructure is at once concerned to address itself to a maximum number of
addresses within its „own‟ territory and, at the same time, concerned also to export
that process of address maximization to territories „outside‟ the West, until such a
time (projecting itself into an infinitely occidental future) as the distinction between
being „inside‟ and being „outside‟ that infrastructure will become ever more difficult
to recognize. (7)
They reflect on the role of identity and music within the politics of location, stressing that
current trends in the study of popular culture have sidelined the “national (of nationalisms,
nation-states, national mythologizing narratives and other manifestations of national or
69
In their ground-breaking anthology Rockin’ Las Americas, Deborah Pacini Hernández, Héctor Fernández
L‟Hoeste, and Eric Zolov note that the initial spread of rock music to the southern regions of the hemisphere
can be attributed to a process of “cultural imperialism” (7). It is not until sociological processes of urbanization
and economic growth does rock truly become an accultured phenomenon. Rock at the beginning of the 1970s
“was often regarded as a sign of imperialist attack, moral collapse, or worse” (9).
156
nationalist ideologies)” (1). This has been blamed, in part, to the binarism or syllogism of
local/global, which from a topographic standpoint expunges the existence of a national.
Keeping in mind Slavoj Zizek‟s and Fredric Jameson‟s variations of the Hegelian
“vanishing mediator,” Biddle and Knights argue that the national can be said to occupy the
position of this term vis-à-vis the syllogism, thereby opening up “new critical trajectories for
popular music studies” (12).70 The idea of the national in Galich, however, is based on the
panamericanism that the author advocates in his own writings on identity. Though the music
of Maná does not strictly adhere to what can be though of as a national essence in Nicaragua,
it does play out Galich‟s musings on the idea of a Central American identity that is borne
from the politico-economic disasters of the 1990s.71 Reacting to similar trends seen in global
music, John O‟Flynn observes that “the designation of „national essence‟ to particular music
is more problematic within modern nation states where tensions between homogenous and
heterogenous are often lived out” (22). The critic concludes that “we should not be surprised
to find that new forms of nationalism continute to emerge and that force of the nation as a
70
Zizek has used this term, as well as Jameson on their writings of late capitalism. Zizek argues that late
capitalism and feudalism were mediated by Protestantism. The national according to Zizek has become the
vanishing mediator. the concept “serves here as a useful model for understanding the ways in which a set of
new cultural conditions can hide the operating territory of its inception: it is useful therefore to think about this
tendency as part of the mechanism by which the local/global dynamic has sought to obfuscate the fact that the
„birth‟ of that syllogism can be traced specifically to national ideologies” (11).
71
Formed in 1978 as “The Green Hat Spies,” Maná‟s music can be seen as a timeline of the development of
rock in Latin America. Their early cover recordings represent a period in Mexican and to an extent continental,
music history where large rock concerts and venues were prohibited. As Pacini Hernández, Fernández L‟Hoeste
and Zolov note, rock is nationalized in the 1980s following the popularization of the use of original Spanish and
Portuguese lyrics, local slang, and local and national topics. This rock nacional coincided with the advent of
neoliberal economic policies that “signaled the collapse of the nationalist projects […] that had defined the
economic policy of Latin American governments since the 1930s” (16). Following this trend, Maná releases
their first album titled Sombrero Verde to reflect the new name of the group. Their rise to international fame in
the 1990s is largely due to a series of albums composed of popular love songs, danceable tunes, and socially
conscious works such as the 1992 hit “¿Dónde jugarán los niños?” that continued some of the earlier themes
first made popular during the boom of rock nacional in the 1980s. Their 1997 “Me voy a convertir en un ave”
famously describes the corruption of the police and the establishment. The group deviated from the apolitical
trend in Latin American rock of the 1990s that was no longer concerned with the politics of music, but that
“enacted a politics of anti-politics, repudiating at the level of sound and performance not only the old
hegemonic ideology of the socialist Left but the ascendant ideology of neoliberal capitalism” (17).
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cultural trope continues to adapt to new political and material conditions” (22).
Consequently, the use of a popular Mexican band by a Guatemalan/Nicaraguan writer in Y te
diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera) does not seem so strange.72
The novel, however, does not solely connect to one specific band or genre, as it
includes diegetic references to Chente Fernández (Mexico, ranchero), Daddy Yankee (Puerto
Rico, reggaeton), Shakira (Colombia, pop), José Feliciano (Puerto Rico, rock), Carlos
Santana (Mexico, rock), La Suprema Corte (Colombia, salsa), and Julio Jaramillo (Ecuador,
pasillo). These intertexts, however, appear in passing or as comedic relief in tense scenes.
The lyrical intertext is not simple adornment, or a subtle reference to paratextual
erotics that cannot be linguistically expressed by narrative, as Galich explicits an intratextual
association between the listened song and the events of his textual movie. Upon listening to
the lyrics “Ay mujer, cómo haces daño, pasan los minutos cual si fuesen años…Mariposa
Traicionera…” (51), Rana exclaims “¡no, no, mi Tamara no es mariposa traicionera!” (51).73
The song is violently stirred into the narrative and not allowed to linger over diegetic ears as
an alternative emotive plane of expression. By connecting the song to La Guajira, Rana
establishes a schema of interrelations between the lyrics and the narrative plot and its
characters. If La Guajira is not the mariposa traicionera, then who is?
72
Galich‟s ideas of the national are circumscribed by the importance he gives to indigenous identities in the
region. In an article that questions the existence of a Guatemalan identity, he affirms that “aunque suene como
un anacronismo, en estos tiempos de la cólera neoliberal, es más necesario que nunca que la revolución social y
para que ésta sea, pasa necesariamente por la revolución de los pueblos indios de América Latina, pues ésta no
echará a andar hasta que no marche el indio” (“Tanda de sueños”). The importance given to indigenous rights is
paralleled in Maná‟s 2006 album Revolución de Amor, where the Leftist track “Justicia, Tierra Y Libertad”
advocates natives‟ rights to democracy and land.
73
Galich‟s transposition of the lyrics is inaccurate, as the song should read “Ay mujer, cómo haces daño, pasan
los minutos cual si fueran años.” The author later repeats the same mistake in the inclusion of the lyrics of a
Julio Jaramillo song, “Nuestro juramento” (206).
158
The novel renews the author‟s spotlight on the detritus left by decades of war and
negative economic policy, focusing on the Central American male bodies that are socially
unadapted and lacking in direction. The characterization of masculinities in Galich‟s two
novels reflect José Toro-Alfonso‟s assertion that hegemonic masculinity as a referent is no
longer viable at the beginning of the 21st century, and that “si existe diversidad en la
representación social de lo masculino entonces es necesario explorar esas formas particulares
en que muchos hombres construyen y reconstruyen su hombría” (15). Given that Managua
Salsa City ended with a negative prototype of the national, Galich seems to probe at a
different relationship between individual identity vis-à-vis the idea of a Central American
identity, inserted in the narrative through the structural schema layed out by the diegetic
reference to Mariposa traicionera.
The linkage between song and narrative is established prior to the diegetic OST, when
La Guajira seduces Cara de Ratón in a motel room where she is being held hostage. She
seduces him after realizing that her body as a sexual commodity gives her the upper hand,
calling him a “Ratoncito” (22), making reference to the verses “Yo soy ratón de tu ratonera,
trampa que no mata pero no libera, vivo muriendo prisionero.” The narrative concretizes the
genderizing of the mariposa as a feminine body by holding the male (Cara de Ratón) as the
now prisoner to La Guajira‟s charms.74 This association, however, is inverted when Rana
refuses to accept his lover as a traitor who has left him to die after the events of Managua
Salsa City. The vilinization of the female is completed when the investigating officers
conclude that a woman must be responsible for the mayhem left at Rana‟s house, as she
functions as the Girardian mediator in Sedgwick‟s theorization of the homosocial.
74
Maná‟s song is already genderized, as the mariposa is explicated to be a woman: “Ay, mujer como haces
daño […] Ay, mujer que fácil eres.”
159
The inversion of the association between woman and mariposa is emphasized when
La Guajira takes Cara de Ratón‟s virginity. She is not the fluttering insect that is “fácil y
ligera de quien te provoca,” but is instead a manipulative vamp who kisses violently and
mounts the “indefenso Roedor” (53). Following this process of inversion, the gender of the
lyrical butterfly becomes paramount in a textual reading that is intimately related to the
descriptive modifier traicionera and its lexeme traicionar. The lyrical metaphor is
representative of a promiscuous lover, but seems to appropriate it for an altogether other
purpose. If the prostitute in Y te diré quién eres (Mariposa traicionera) is not the lyrical
subject, then who is?
Aside from Rana‟s exclamation upon first listening to the song, the text reveals a
narrative mise-en-abyme when the male protagonist ponders the results of the Sandinista
Revolution. Rana reflects that “lo que se comenzó en el setenta no se ha concluido, esta
chochada quedó incompleta, fue traicionada, unos más otros menos, pero en fin, traidores”
(61). What is of interest here is Rana‟s diegetic usage of the lexeme traicionar, as it begins to
establish a gendered identity to the lyrically juxtaposed mariposa.
In fact we discover that men are the only traitors in Galich‟s tale, including the exsoldier Medallitas who betrays the government to the Contras. Given that the author plays a
textual game of inversion to explore the constructs of masculinity in Central America, it
comes as no surprise that he fashions groups of homosocial masculinities, such as the police,
the press, and the group of conniving politicians who are blamed for ransacking the country,
in a textual economy of nation evocative of similar strategies seen in the new historical
novels studied earlier. Rana attempts a bombing of this group, leading to one politician to
scream “¡traición! ¡traición!” (94). In a knowing wink towards the role of music as an
160
intertext, the only figures left standing, nonchalantly gathering their instruments after the
bombing are a group of hired musicians. They don‟t stop playing their instruments during the
action sequence of the bombing, suggesting that whatever tunes their bandleader waves
belongs on the diegetic audiotrack and in the novel‟s OST album.
Returning to the idea of inversion vis-à-vis the title song, Pancho Rana is also
associated with the trope of the traitorous military male when he suggests that he might be
viewed as a turncoat for escaping with jewels entrusted to him by a transnational Mafioso
known as El Jefe. Therefore if the hypervirile Rana is characterized as a traitor, along with a
series of other masculine characters, how does the relationship between traicionar and
mariposa develop?
The latter term is used descriptively to refer to prostitutes who Rana consults when
looking for La Guajira. But the reference is glossed over when the “mariposas nocturnas”
(63) are immediately after described as a group of “abejitas” (63). The author swiftly
capsizes the culturally atuned idea of the female butterfly in favor of an alternative reading of
who betrays who in contemporary Managua‟s infierno, as it is the many subordinate
masculinities who are labeled as traitors. Even when the gathering of politicians is bombed,
they as hegemonic entitites are spared the queering effect of betrayal.
I say queering as it is evident that the real mariposas in Y te diré quién eres are the
many subordinate masculinities that prowl the streets of the region. They become associated
with the lyrical imagery of the floating butterfly that actively goes from lover to lover, and
who passively opens her “alitas, muslos de colores” where her lovers mount her. The
syntactic association is diegetically played out in the case of Cara de Ratón, who is arguably
the greatest social/moral traitor when he surprises La Guajira in the motel room where she is
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held hostage. Galich cross-dresses the already animalized male “con su calzoncito bikini, el
brasier y sus zapatos de plataforma, y las joyas” (70). Faced with this ghastly specter, La
Guajira wonders if he is a cochón, referring to the cultural phenomenon of the heterosexual
male who has relations with other men, but always as the insertee.75
The implied plurality of masculinities is mentioned in an earlier scene between
Pancho Rana and one of the “abejitas,” La Chobi-Xaquira, who is described by Rana as
having an attractive body. Xaquira is a transvestite prostitute who claims to know where La
Guajira is. She coyly asks Rana what kind of a man he is: “¿Macho-menos o macho-más,
macho probado o macho-macho?” (64). This depiction of Central American masculinities is
reinforced when Alexa, a prostitute who is gifted to Pancho, shares with him her knowledge
of men:
Hay quienes les gusta que la mujer los masturbe oralmente, les gusta la eyaculación
bucal. Otros, en cambio, les gusta hacer el beso negro; pero eso es babosada […] hay
otros que les gusta que les besen la roseta, pero hay otros que les gusta que les metan
el dedo […] Ya no digamos los hombres que les gusta dar y que les den y los que les
gusta con dos y tres y hasta cuatro mujeres. O todos contra todos, como en la lucha
libre. (144)
The smorgasbord of male sexuality as laid out contradicts anthropological work done
on the region that isolates cochón culture as a specific example of the traditional aim versus
object of desire paradigm that is reserved for discussions about Latin American erotics. The
practices related by the young prostitute contradict Rosario-Vélez‟s denomination of a
sexuality that is “reproductiva, mimética y de acreditación cultural” (68). The idea of a
macho-menos is illustrated by El Guapo, a businessman with illicit businesses who agrees to
sell the stolen jewels. His feminine physicality is contrasted with his sexual tastes, as he has
affairs with both La Guajira and Xaquira. El Guapo eludes the cochón label, queering a
75
See Roger Lancaster‟s study on this erotic phenomenon in Nicaragua.
162
sexuality that is traditionally viewed as compatible with heteronormative practices. The
dialectic agent of sublation is the transvestite who reveals that El Guapo likes to be
sodomized, in addition to sodomizing others. The final queering touch of the businessman is
added when Xaquira calls him a “traidor degenerado” (164), thereby morphing his physical
and semantic characteristics with the lyrical and ontological schema captured in Maná‟s
song. El Guapo becomes one of many mariposas that Galich gathers in his text, lacking
agency and any semblance of a physical and/or psychological phallus. He becomes a
seductive butterfly that goes from flower to flower, “seduciendo a los pistilos.”
This verse of the song reveals a mistyped sexualizing of the lyrical subject, as the
botanical pistil houses the female genitalia of the flower. The female-gendered butterfly
therefore seduces and goes from female-sexualized flower to flower, suggesting that there is
an underlying queer facet to the song that Galich exploits in his intertext.
Following the trajectory of El Guapo, Pancho Rana is sublated from a position of
virile masculinity to a subordinate position that is brought about by the queering transvestite.
He recounts the sexual conquests over La guajira and Hope, the wife of his anglicized boss in
Managua, but then wonders how Xaquira‟s lips taste. In another scene Rana reminisces about
Xaquira‟s “lindas piernas y un culo mejor que el de muchas mujeres” (151). Though Rana
never engages in explicit sexual relations with Xaquira, it is alluded to that he participates in
a night of debauchery that includes “bichas” and “bichos” (179), suggesting that he engages
in some of the practices that Alexa shares with the reader.
The figure of the transvestite further queers Rana by the many lexical borrowings he
displays as the scenes progress. Xaquira and a homosexual make-up artist are known for their
usage of pejorative, homophobic language such as “maricón” and “degenerado.” Their first
163
line of defense against would-be attackers and cheating lovers is to appropriate the lexicon of
heteronormative discourse. Rana re-appropriates Xaquira‟s appropriation of this discourse as
he escapes capture from a group of men who hunt him, calling them “¡jueputas maricones!”
(157). Though Rana is quick to assume the transvestite‟s manipulation of hegemonic
discourse, he fails to fully articulate his own homosexual desire. The parallelism between
Maná‟s “Mariposa traicionera” and Y te diré quién eres succeeds in queering the ex-military
masculinity of Rana but the text resists a full-blown recategorization of the character,
suggesting that the ties between the poetics of the text and the social erotics of Galich‟s postSandinista Central America are not firm. After all, the half-written title of the novel evokes
the incomplete nature of the connection between language and sexual desire/practice, putting
forward an aesthetics of incompletion as a model for representing turn-of-the-century Central
America. This is plasmated in a conversation between Rana and an associate who is attracted
to Xaquira. At this juncture in the text both men know that she is a transvestite, leading Rana
to ask: “¿Y por qué si tanto te Gus…tavo no te la Jala…pa para el Mo…motombo?” (184).
Though linguistically queered by the mimicry of the transvestite‟s defense-mechanism, Rana
remains an ambivalently heterosexual man who cannot fully express his desire towards
Xaquira. The play on words, the theatre of syllables uttered and absent, suggests to the reader
the inherent difficulty in quantifying and qualifying masculinity in a society turned on its
head.
Following this observation, it is evident that the other masculinities in Y te diré quién
eres (Mariposa traicionera) are similarly precluded from a hegemonic position in Galich‟s
Managua. The press, for example, does not support Connell‟s theory of science and
objectivity as a necessary strategy for achieving hegemony. They are a haphazard group of
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misfits that exaggerate and speculate on the news, repeatedly blaming the Islamic terrorist
group Al-Qaeda for the bombing engineered by Rana.76 The police, metonymized by the
womanizing Anastasio Cerna, are initially characterized as patriotic, masculine, and in
control of strategies that promote a patriarchal control of society. This is lyricized by
Cernasinging “Palomita Guasiruca,” a song made popular by the Sandinista Carlos Mejía
Godoy, a nationalistic and progressive singer/politician. Cerna, however, is disqualified from
a position of hegemony when he fails to achieve an erection while having an affair with his
assistant Vilma. The police captain‟s final coup de grace, however, is saved for Xaquira who
seduces him with her “bello tronco asentadero que tanto le apasionaba” (192).
Following her association with the queering of Rana, based on the syntactic
relationship between mariposa and to betray, it comes as no surprise that Cerna, representing
the law, is the biggest traitor in the novel. The dying Pancho Rana recognizes the head of the
Policía Nacional as an ex-Sandinista recruite who betrayed his group to the Contras, only to
betray them by reverting to the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional). It is the
same Cerna, who then betrays the power entrusted to him as a member of law enforcement
by allowing drug lords to operate and by taking part in a “red de corrupción que involucraba
a personas del gobierno, la policía, y particulares” (200). Cerna executes Rana as one of the
many who “se oponen al progreso de la patria” (201, my emphasis). If Galich is ambiguous
in his characterization of Rana, he leaves no room for doubt in the elimination of Cerna from
a position of socially-hegemonic masculinity, as he is incapable of articulating progress for
the nation.
76
Following their practice of speculation, it can be assumed that Galich is aiming an implicit dagger at the
North American press who repeatedly and unapologetically blamed Al-Qaeda for a series of international
terrorist bombing after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
165
The imminent execution of the protagonist instigates a stream of consciousness where
Rana epitomizes a greater sentiment of loss, frustration and disillusionment that characterizes
Central American fiction produced in the last twenty years. As a testament to his frustration,
Rana describes himself as a “perro rabioso que echa fuego por los ojos por la boca por la
nariz” (202). The narrative stream includes lyrics from the final stanza of “Mariposa
traicionera,” suggesting a narrative awareness of the text‟s conclusion and/or a diegetic
awareness of impending death. The disjointed, accelerated comments, images and lyrics
succeed in disarticulating Rana‟s control over the narrative. Rana inaccurately calls La
Guajira a “Mariposa Traicionera,” when it is clear that it is the men in the text who are the
traidores and mariposas.
The biggest traitor, Anastasio Cerna is obliterated in an ambush orchestrated by
Rana‟s men, thereby assuring that no negative literary extrapolations can be made at the end
of Y te diré quién eres, as is the case in Managua Salsa City. As Rana slips into
unconsciousness, he leaves the reader with a new model of masculinity that emerges from the
chaos left by decades of misanthropic politics and top-serving economics that is composed of
“hombres dispuestos a cualquier cosa con tal de conseguir siquiera un tuco de lo que ellos
[los ricos políticos y poderosos] consiguen sin verguiarse en las calles bajo el nica sol de
encendidos lolos” (210). The symbol of the Masculine, Cerna, that entity that previously
Taking this model as a point of entry into a larger thesis on a post-Sandinista,
destroyed-by-neoliberalism Central America, we can note two arguments. First, gender as a
socioliterary trope is made malleable and negotiable by the disarticulation of a traditional
hegemonic model of masculinity. The novel is noticeably lacking in metaphysical and
homosocial hegemonic masculinity and instead presents a series of subordinate masculinities
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that are ontologically impotent when it comes to establishing a functioning strategy of
patriarchy. Second, by substituting in a group of men who are mariposas due to their
betraying and being betrayed, the author establishes a hermeneutic erotics that is based on
popular culture.77 With that being said, the central axis of Galich text is the intertextual
referent of Maná‟s transnational yet ontologically Latin American brand of rock music as a
carefully conceived affront to the cultural colonization that began in the 1980s as
neoliberalism invaded the region.78
Lyrical Desires and an Aesthetics of Resistance/Confrontation
The use of popular music as an intertext in the writing of masculinities vis-à-vis
societies during and in the wake of the neoliberal tsunami evidences a renewed connection
between these texts and their ideas of the national. In these societies, popular music is
deified, as Vicente Francisco Torres notes, “la canción popular es una religión; el altar es el
aparato de sonido y los sacerdotes los ídolos” (21). The religiosity of song is imbued into the
novel by authors who are “intermediarios, como los santos u orishas que conectan a los fieles
– los lectores – con sus deidades populares” (Ramírez Plata 53). The product of this sacred
textuality is a narrative that is rich in cultural referents, which additionally serves as a site of
enunciation for political, economic, social, and erotic discourses.
77
I appropriate Jeanette Winterson‟s coinage of the term in her essay “The Erotics of Risk,” where the critic
understands hermeneutic erotics to be “those features of narrative form that capture the reader by setting out the
diegetic erotics of the story itself” (48).
78
Like Mayra Montero, the members of Maná have publicly supported Puerto Rican sovereignty from the
United States.
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The novels examined in Chapter 2 sought a theorization of the textual signifiers and
strategies of representation of masculinities in contemporary Latin American fiction. These
textualities are compounded by the literary veneration of song, as the lyrics, melodies and
dance of musics open up new hermeneutic entry-points into an understanding of desire, and
of the role of gender within the representation of the social changes occurring outside the
novel-scape. In Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero, the text exposes all the characteristics
of a popular music novel, from its usage of song for a title, to diegetic and narrative lyrical
verses, leading the way to what can be thought of as a literary OST. It is clear that music
becomes a plane of expression for non-traditional and/or queering desires that cannot (or will
not) be expressed through narrative.This is the case in Mayra Montero‟s La última noche que
pasé contigo, where the repeated boleros provide a lyricized language to codify the latent and
implicit desires of the characters on a cruise. The use of music as a narrative apparatus shifts
from a psychoanalytic to a political gear in Alfredo Bryce Echenique‟s El huerto de mi
amada, where the writer uses diegetic song as a means to establish diverging topographies
that are metonymic of the power exerted by hegemonic masculinities in Lima. The
politicization of this novelistic strategy is taken further when Franz Galich carefully controls
and employs rock music in his (incomplete) transnational thesis against Northern
imperialism.
The fixation on borders in the face of cultural imperialism in Y te diré quién eres
(Mariposa traicionera) is sensitive to the novelistic role of topographic space. What is it
about Managua, Lima, or the open waters of the Caribbean that triggers a discussion of
masculinity and power? Is this a renaissance of the age-old binary of center/periphery that
structures so much earlier Latin American political and literary thought? The presentation of
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new masculinities that are central to the recovery of the national in the face of the
encroaching and assimilating forces of globalization is contingent upon a spatial demarcation
of identity. Galich‟s new model, after all, only becomes a possibility through the textual
mariposas within the delimitations of the infernal setting of Managua, Rock City. The
presentation of a post-war, anti-neoliberal model confronts Connell‟s transnational business
masculinity that takes a leading role in an emergent gendered world order, which is
associated with the dominant, transnational institutions of the world economy. This brand of
masculinity, according to Connell, has achieved a position of hegemony over other models
(The Men and the Boys 46). But these other models have arrived, and actively resist
domination in the battlegrounds of the neo-liberal agenda, in the spaces that negotiate a
struggle between homogenous modernity and autochthonous alternatives. Space in these
contemporary works is both genderized and genderizing, and gives way to the formation of
organic masculinities that rise from the continent in the face of cultural and economic
imperialism.
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CHAPTER 4
FROM THE SPATIAL TO THE VIRTUAL: GENDERIZED AND GENDERIZING
SPACES IN THE METROPOLIS
Vista desde las alturas, la Ciudad de México es
una mancha urbana; vista desde la cercanía
más próxima, es un muestrario de destrozos.
Ciudad sin forma, encuentra sentido en la
deformación de uso.
Juan Villoro, El Olvido: Un itinerario urbano
(25).
If in the previous pages I presented a textual space conscious of the limits and
boundaries of space within the discussions of gender, self, and nation, in this chapter I focus
on what Manuel Castells calls the megacity to craft an inquiry into the relevance of the urban
when dealing with Masculinity. The sociologist defines this space as “the nodes of the global
economy, concentrating the directional, productive, and managerial upper functions all over
the planet” (403). He specifies that this new space is composed of “discontinuous
constellations of spatial fragments, functional pieces, and social segments” (407). The
discontinuity of the megalopolis can be viewed as a schism from previous ideas of the Latin
American city. As Sarissa Carneiro observes, “si, en distintos momentos de la historia, la
ciudad fue el símbolo del orden, la perfección, la civilización y la modernidad, es decir: la
realización de un diseño buscado como Ciudad Ideal, las megalópolis latinoamericanas
actuales son, en muchos aspectos, un contratexto de dicha idealidad” (69).79
79
They are importantly an amalgam of several urban centers, which Edward Soja denotes as a geopolitical
instance of synekism that is explained to be a “regional concept of cityspace, a form and process of political
My concluding remarks in the previous chapter point towards a geopolitical challenge
in North/South cultural relations that assumes a process of cultural imperialism, where the
use of rock music as a narrative affront to political and economic influence axiomizes the
process of globalization. This process, as Edward W. Soja asserts, is a “particularly voracious
trope, devouring and digesting a widening gyre of alternative discursive representations of
what is new in our present world, while at the same time asserting itself as the necessary
foundational concept for deciding what is to be done in response to this pervasively global
newness” (190). The trope gains footing in narratives that map tangential loci of
representative urbanisms that symbolize and juxtapose presupposed sets of values and power
relations. The novels of Jaime Bayly, for example, systemize a tectonics of erotics that locate
free homosexual expression and identification in the anglicized space of Miami and not the
archaic, repressed and oligarchic cesspool of Lima.80 In this literary paradigm, a mapped out
transnational space is necessary for the identification and expression of self along an axis of
gender that is codified, textualized, and defined by space.
governance, economic development, social order, and cultural identity that involved not just one urban
settlement or node but many articulated together in a multi-layered meshwork of nodal settlements or citycentered regions” (13). In biologic terms Soja understands the grouping of urbanizations as a process of
cephalization that is bonded together by agglomeration economies which he defines as “the economic
advantages (and at times disadvantages) that derive from the dense clustering of people and sites of production,
consumption, administration, culture, and related activities in nodal concentrations that form the focal points of
a regional system of settlements” (13).
80
Employing an autobiographic narrative style that is best understood as recycling, Bayly engages a process of
sexual globalization that underlines the rise of a homosexual internacional in Lima, an identity that does not
conform to traditional ideas of activos versus pasivos. The fluidity of ideas from Miami to Lima, which is to say
a presupposition of an intangible highway of influence, is studied by Robert Ruz in a survey of Bayly‟s literary
production in the 1990s. The critic argues that though Bayly‟s narratives are firmly rooted in Lima‟s society and
politics, his life and work are strongly influenced by US popular culture and sexual politics. My description of
Lima is not rooted in personal experience but is instead a snapshot that attempts to capture the city that Bayly
narrates in novels including No se lo digas a nadie (1994), Y de repente, un ángel (2005), and El cojo y el loco
(2009).
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It comes as no surprise, then, that contemporary Latin American fiction evidences a
spatial mapping that attempts an anti-regionalism through the depictions of what Alberto
Fuguet calls non-places. In his novels he constructs a spatial Latin America that is
metaphysically linked with North American and/or globalized culture.81 The focus on the
foreign within the politico-physical boundaries of Latin America creates a praxis of space
that is not necessarily regional or indigenous: Fuguet‟s non-spaces are airports, Starbucks,
and commercial malls, where the ambulating literary subject undergoes a topographic
dislocation into an imagined global order that is rife with these markers of cultural
globalism.82 The iconic reference to this phenomenon comes in the introduction to McOndo
(1996) where Fuguet argues that Latin America has become “otro país […] [que] es más
grande, sobrepoblado y lleno de contaminación, con autopistas, metro, TV-cable y barriadas.
En McOndo hay McDonald‟s, computadores Mac y condominios, amén de hoteles cinco
estrellas construidos con dinero lavado y malls gigantescos” (17).83
The qualitative problem with denoting these locales as non-spaces is that Fuguet fails
to acknowledge their physical positioning within what Soja calls a cityspace. The
81
Illustrative of this process is Mala onda (1991), which deals with the fetishization of North American popular
and filmic culture amidst the decidedly autochthonous backdrop of Pinochet‟s government.
82
Fuguet‟s Por favor, rebobinar (1998) showcases the construction of the cinemaspace as a non-space where
US popular culture diffuses into the national imaginary of Chilean youth. The exploration of non-space is best
noted in Aeropuertos (2010). Taking this shift a step further, the protagonist in Las películas de mi vida (2003)
is only able to reflect on his identity when he travels abroad, evocative of Jaime Bayly‟s autobiographic
character, Joaquín, in No se lo digas a nadie who only begins to gain a sense of self when he leaves Lima for
Miami and is freely allowed to express his sexuality, undoubtedly a reflection of the author‟s own move and
creation of a persona that hinges on sexual ambiguity.
83
Though the impact of any anthology or manifesto poses a cultural quandary of causality, the quoted lines
from McOndo represent an ethos of literature that has been produced in Latin America in the past fifteen years.
For a more complete understanding of some of the trends seen in this fiction, please see Francisca Noguerol‟s
“Narrar sin fronteras,” where the critic identifies a set of qualitative trends evidenced in contemporary regional
(and not national) fiction.
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geophilosopher defines the concept as a “historical-social-spatial phenomenon, but with its
intrinsic spatiality highlighted for interpretive and explanatory purposes” (8). The non-space
is by default not exclusive of the physical and theorized structures of Latin American
cityspace. It is fine and well that Fuguet and his followers choose to focus on a
conceptualized Latin America that rumbles smoothly to the beat provided by an iPod but in
reality, they promulgate nothing more than fodder for the neoliberal movement that Franz
Galich and others warn of in their fiction.84
More tellingly, Fuguet‟s conceptualization of space presumes an utopist
understanding of a McDonald‟s as an oasis within a desert that imagines a non-belonging to
the Latin American cityspace. His conjecture seems to sustain what Michel Foucault denotes
as the heterotopias of contemporary space.85 These heterotopias are further developed in the
work of Soja who articulates a three-tiered understanding of spatiality. He defines firstspace
as “a set of materialized „spatial practices‟ that work together to produce and reproduce the
concrete forms and specific patternings of urbanism as a way of life” (10), with secondspace
occupying a dialect position where cityspace becomes “more of a mental or ideational field,
conceptualized in imagery, reflexive thought, and symbolic representation, a conceived space
of the imagination” (11). From a critical standpoint, secondspace is the realm of an “urban
epistemology, a formal framework and method for obtaining knowledge about cityspace and
84
For an in-depth criticism of McOndo, see Palaversich‟s Macondo a McOndo: Senderos de la postmodernidad
latinoamericana (2005), where she systematically demythifies Fuguet‟s neoliberal, panamericanist project in
McOndo and Se habla español. Voces latinas en USA (2000). The critic deconstructs both anthologies and their
proposals in “Entre mangos y Coca-Cola: el planeta USA” (49-60).
85
“There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places – places that do exist and that are
formed in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted
utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously
represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible
to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they
reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.” (Foucault, Michel. Of
Other Spaces [1967], Heterotopias).
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explaining its specific geography” (11). The critic‟s hypothesized thirdspace, conversely,
occupies a third axis where the urban space is “a simultaneously real-and-imagined, actualand-virtual, locus of structured individual and collective experience and agency” (11). It is in
this third level of conceptualizing space does Soja argue that we can critically observe how
and why societies and cultures operate.
I propose that one (of the many) problems with Fuguet‟s understanding of space is
that he gets lost in secondspace, as he fails to consider that the non-space and/or the
McDonald‟s is physically and textually linked to the streets of Mexico City, Lima, Santiago,
and Managua. The reality of the malls, Macintoshes, and McDonald‟s that Fuguet and others
normalize is also an exclusive existence that is prohibited to the majority of Latin Americans.
How many Peruvians enjoy the upper-class lifestyle of Jaime Bayly? How many Chileans fly
first class like Fuguet? How many Mexicans enjoy the advanced and modern commodities of
Xavier Velasco‟s city? Even if globalization has changed the exportable face of Latin
America, its interior and young cities and neighborhoods are far-removed from the McOndo
spaces represented in certain strands of contemporary fiction.
The question of masculinity is primal in the conception of the urban, as the centers of
power are traditional strongholds of Connell‟s strategy of hegemonic masculinity. We can
note the political power of Marcos Burgos in Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar as he
controls economic production and personal sexuality in turn-of-the-century Mexico City. A
similar genderizing of space occurs in Bryce Echenique‟s El huerto de mi amada, as the
centers of Lima legitimize the discursive power of the homosocial group. The binary cityhegemonic masculinity can further be observed in traditional caudillo novels as the phallic
position of the capital is metonymized by the phallic body/role of the dictator. Even in
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Fuguet‟s Mala onda (1991), the urban center is the playground of hegemonic masculinity, as
the protagonist, Matías Vicuña, gains admission to its ranks when he joins his father in a
brothel, thereby engaging himself in the process of hacerse hombre. Though he is critical of
a myriad of things, Vicuña manages to reintegrate himself into society and his social class by
agreeing to be genderized by the center and entering the Masculine.
Even with the crisis of regional masculinities that overshadows Latin American
discourses of hombría, it is evident that the urban center never loses its association with
hegemonic masculinity. This latter term is of course being used in a culturally-sensitive
fashion, as the values of hegemonic masculinity in Latin American societies share several
points of meeting. The brothel, for one, is a common space of becoming, and the importance
of the Latin phallus that Ilan Stavans carefully describes is ontological to an understanding of
masculinity and space. My point here is that though masculinity as a social construct is in
flux due to the democratization of society, its hegemonic variant seemingly never loses a
symbolic hold over the center.
In the following pages I study the structure of the city and how it is represented.
Focusing on the symbolic spaces that genderize and are genderizing, I reflect on how
masculinities survive in the chaotic centers of the growing Latin American city. Going
beyond a strict existence of survival, I speculate on the possibilities of resemanticizing the
urban symbols that subjugate genders to hegemonic masculinity. My study is, therefore,
grounded in a practice that considers the tangible cityspace in a position that disarticulates it
from the literary fixation on globalization.86 In this chapter I propose a study of a materially,
86
The subsequent narrative focus on the indigenous city and its corridors, centers, and spaces without relying on
allochthonous projections of identity (rooted in fictive spaces such as Miami or New York). A similar process is
carried out by Fuguet in the least critically-evaluated Tinta roja (1996), where the writer takes a Baylyesque
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textually and physically constructed Latin American cityspace that sits at the tectonic
juncture of political and erotic North/South relations: Mexico City. By means of a close
reading of Ana Clavel‟s Los deseos y su sombra (2000) and Cuerpo náufrago (2005), this
chapter articulates the need to map-out the Masculine city, and to understand the subject‟s
position within this textual space as an intrinsic step in the development of creating an
identity vis-à-vis a nation. I purposely leave aside McOndo representations of the city in
favor of texts that emanate a physicality that is rooted both in the imaginary and real Latin
America; i.e. in Soja‟s thirdspace. This rooting or process of reterritorialization takes into
account masculinity as a socio-historic construct that to be defined must necessarily be
contextualized.
I focus exclusively on Clavel and not on the myriad of other city narratives as she
evades the literary comfort zone of the flaneur and instead performs multiple interpretations
and/or approximations to the idea of a representable city. As a writer that intratextually cites
Barthes, Foucault, and Freud, Clavel incites a theoretical perspective to the writing and
interpretation of her narratives. The two novels I analyze in these pages make reference to the
two prominent schools of thought vis-à-vis the hermeneutic study of the city. The textual
strategies in Los deseos y su sombra perpetuate the city-as-text methodology framed by
critics and theorists such as Barthes, Soja, and Lefebvre, whereas Cuerpo náufrago is
evocative of the rhizomatic, non-directional, and atextual ideology initiated by Deleuze and
Guattari and continued by John Protevi, Mark Bonta, and Tom Conley amongst others.
Including references to other works by Juan Villoro, Armando Ramírez and Cristina Rivera
Garza, the analysis and juxtaposition of these two novels, therefore, addresses a procedural
turn in the chronicle of the early career of journalist exploring the sordid underworld of Santiago, without
involving foreign centers of representation.
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facet to the study of masculinity vis-à-vis the city, as I explore different conceptions of space
and evade a critically-biased strategy by putting forth multiple ideas of spatiality and its
representation.
It comes as a methodological departure that my analysis should focus on solely the
Mexican context, as the previous and subsequent chapters attempt an understanding of
continental practices of representation, but I leave the reader with the caveat that this
analytical focusing on Mexico City does not establish an exclusivity to its textual and
physical boundaries.87 It is, after all, only one of the many large and growing metropolitan
areas in Latin America. Critics since Ángel Rama, writing about the cityspace in Latin
America, have established a generalized ontological model that roots the Latin American
center in the arrival of the Spanish conquerors and the establishment of artificial centers of
control.88 Parting from this hypothesis, Dietrich Kunkel argues that urban centers in Latin
America, though unique in their development and character, converge in certain points,
including an unregulated speed of growth and divide between rich and poor that lead to stark
demographic stratification (325). The rich neighborhood of Polanco in Mexico City, for
example, is analogous to Miraflores in Lima, or El Barrio Alto in Santiago. They are urban
and aesthetic centers of wealth and power that are fundamental to a textual construction of
87
The focus on the works of a single author also comes as a methodological departure, but I underline the
commitment to a praxis of space and subsequently gender that is problematized eloquently and exhaustively
through multiple points of view and gendered narrative voices.
88
See his quintessential text La ciudad letrada (1984). Rama‟s work has influenced the critical thought of other
thinkers such as Jean Franco and Álvaro Cuadra whose De la ciudad letrada a la ciudad virtual (2003) provides
a third millennium approach to the idea of the lettered city. Franco‟s critical readings of García Márquez,
Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos and Onetti in The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin American in the Cold
War examines aesthetic, ethical, political, and economic changes in Latin American culture and literature in the
latter half of the 20th century.
177
privileged and other space that is often unseen, unheard, and irrelevant to constructs of
nationhood and modernity.89
In saying that I believe a critical analysis rooted in an understanding of one
(representative) urban center is more productive than a half-attempted analysis of several
cities. Such a project undoubtedly requires its own space and corpus of study, which falls
outside the larger aim of my analysis. It is my scholarly hope, however, that the analysis
performed on Mexico City will prove fruitful in similar mapping vis-à-vis gender inquiries
into other urban centers in Latin America.
The textual work behind this process in these pages is traced through a connective
hermeneutics between Ana Clavel‟s Los deseos y su sombra and Cuerpo naúfrago to propose
an understanding of space in relation to gender that is contingent upon what Soja terms the
dialectic pairing of deterritorialization and reterritorialization (212), which is borne from the
debates and postulates of critics of globalization and hybridism such as Homi Bhaba, Arjun
Appadurai, and Nestor García Canclini. If Fuguet and his contemporaries such as Edmundo
Paz Soldán and Santiago Roncagliolo push towards a deterritorialization of Latin American
space in their fiction, then a dialectic reaction of reterritorialization must occur.90
This converse process, however, is what interests me in the novels of Clavel, as her
texts emphasize the central tension between what Arjun Appadurai calls “cultural
89
I contend that the textual construction of these privileged spaces is perpetuated and repeated by upper-class
writers who enjoy the protection and dissemination of international publishing houses that package,
commercialize, and export their literature (and depictions of the Latin American city). There are, however,
exceptions to this rule, notably in the works of Pedro Lemebel, Armando Ramírez, Franz Galich, Carlos Labbé
and Maurice Echeverría amongst others.
90
The Bolivian writer, Paz Soldán, is well-known for his novels in addition to the anthology, Se habla español
(2000) co-edited alongside Fuguet. Roncagliolo, on the other hand, first gains fame with his work on the
Sendero luminoso movement in Peru, but his most recent Tan cerca de la vida (2010) favors the anonymity of
space that comes with deterritorialization in a globalized world.
178
homogenization and cultural heterogenization” (32). It is the latter that places emphasis on
the territorialized and unique, which is to say the spatial specificity of Latin America and its
cities as discursive sites of convergence, as it is the shift towards the mega-city status of the
1980s that triggers the writing of the cityspace in Los deseos y su sombra.
On the one hand, I study how the city is composed within the narrative, paying
attention to the spaces that are inferred and explicated in the text. It is here that I pause to
consider how the cityspace articulates a dynamic of gendered power that has typically been
encapsulated by the binarism of civilización and barbarie that the Argentine Domingo
Faustino Sarmiento first penned in Civilización y barbarie. Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga y
aspecto físico, costumbres y hábitos de la República Argentina (1845). The naturalist
positions of the urban subject versus his rural counterpart came to underline Latin American
understandings of identity, best noted in Esteban Echeverría‟s Argentine classic El Matadero
(1839) that juxtaposes the urban civility of a young unitario who strolls into the slaughter
yard occupied by the multitude of animalized lower-class men, women and children who take
part in the orgiastic slaying of the animals.91 This traditional geospatial understanding of
space and self is counter-theorized by Soja as he observes that the binary of center and
periphery is neutralized by the discursive practice of cityspace, as it “will always contain
inhabited or, for that matter, uninhabited or wilderness areas that do not look urban in any
conventional way, but nonetheless are urbanized, part of a regional cityspace” (16).92 The
91
Reacting to the dictatorship of Juan Manuel Rosas in the first half of the 1800s, Echeverría‟s romantic prose
exalts the young unitario who supports a centralized government for the newly independent region. The
adjectivization of space in relation to the subject was central to the author‟s earlier verses, as in the epic La
cautiva (1837), he spatializes the libidinal, brutal, and backwards native within the periphery whereas the heroic
(and European) savior of the captured female comes from the city.
92
The works of the Chilean Hernán Rivera Letelier are representative of this break that Soja theorizes, as even
in the description of the rural, barren landscape of the salt mines in the desert, space is conceived of in urban
179
urban metropolis, therefore, no longer conforms to the 19th-century naturalist and romantic
philosophy of civilización and barbarie that counterpoised conflicting yet mutually defining
ideas of self that were incarnated in the discursive geographic spaces of city and periphery. 93
On the other hand, these pages consider the textual placing of the subject within the
reterritorialized cityspace, following Henri Lefebvre‟s assertion that action only gains
meaning when spatialized, or as Soja rehashes, “all social relations, whether they are linked
to class, family, community, market, or state power, remain abstract and ungrounded until
they are specifically spatialized, that is, made into material and symbolic spatial relations”
(9). It is through this affirmation that the relationship between subject and city can be
condensed and evaluated through the optic of masculinity as a building block of constructed,
performed, and imagined self. The city is, after all, a literary character and a discourse that
speaks and listens to its inhabitants as it is (a)textually mapped-out, and (a)textually maps its
subjects.
Writing/Mapping the Subaltern Space: Los deseos y su sombra
Writing on the position of the metropolis within global geopolitical tectonics of the
21st century, Iain Chambers argues that metropolitan centers such as Mexico City have
terms and comparisons. The economic models that Rivera Letelier superimposes onto his work, which bears
some recyclage, are evocative of contemporary allegories of North American influence in the economies of
Latin America. A perusal of novels such as Canción para caminar sobre las aguas (2004), La contadora de
películas (2009) and El arte de la resurrección (2010) sustain this hypothesis.
93
Margarita Vargas undertakes an archaeology of Mexican Romantic literature with a focus on how writers
attempted to nationalize literature. She unmasks their efforts as methods of perpetuating patriarchal and
phallogocentric ideas of nationhood.
180
“invariably functioned as the privileged figure(s) of modernity” (55).94 They are the
apotheosis of aesthetic and economic forces that become models of financial and social
development and metaphors of modernization and “metaphysical reality” (55). It is this
dysfunctional and disjointed approximation to the metropolis that leads Edward Soja to coin
a post-spatial understanding of the city.95 The demystification of the urban center is
continued by Chambers who argues that the metropolis is only a:
[M]yth, a tale, a telling that helps us to locate our home in modernity […] The
metropolis is an allegory; in particular it represents the allegory of the crisis of
modernity that we have learnt to recognize in the voices of Baudelaire, Benjamin, and
Kafka […] [T]his metropolis is not simply the final stage of a poignant narrative, of
apocalypse and nostalgia, it is also the site of the ruins of previous orders in which
diverse histories, languages, memories and traces continually entwine and recombine
in the construction of new horizons. (112)
By alluding to the textual nature of the city, Chambers calls to attention a need to understand
the mythology of the urban space. Aside from identifying its phenotype, a critical
understanding of how it operates and how power runs through and is captured by it is
94
Anadeli Bencomo‟s Voces y voceros de la megalópolis: la crónica periodístico-literaria en México (2002)
provides a well-thought introduction to the textualization of the postmodern city. Fitting into a line of critical
inquiry characterized by tomes such as Carlos Monsiváis: Culture and Chronicle in Contemporary Mexico
(Linda Egan, 2001) and The Contemporary Mexican Chronicle: Theoretical Perspectives on the Liminal Genre
(Corona and Jörgensen, 2002), Bencomo focuses on the works of Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monsiváis and
José Joaquín Blanco, as she examines the chaotic reality of “la megalopolización de la capital mexicana” (36).
95
The conception of the urban or the megacity, therefore, is understood along the planes of first, second, and
thirdspace as an interactive and physical locus of spatiality, behavior, meaning, and discourse. It is formed by a
process of synekistic agglomeration, which is a “behavioral and transactional as well as political and economic
concept that activates, makes into a social and historical force, the spatial specificity of urbanism” (13). It is this
understanding of space vis-à-vis urbanism that explains Neville Brown‟s strongly imperialistic description of
Mexico City as a “feral” city (239). Under a precociously innocent subheading of “Cities too soon?” the critic
posits that third-world centers such as Beijing, Johannesburg and Mexico City are not ready for urban
modernity. In the latter example he points out that “both the police force and the judiciary are seriously corrupt,
a reality that no doubt reflects the situation nationwide” (239). It is the condition of being “feral” that Edward
Soja, however, assigns to all contemporary urban centers of synekistic agglomeration, as he argues that the
traditional binary of center and periphery no longer applies in the 21 st century, and that the idea of a “tame”
urbanism is a practical and theoretical fallacy. Echoing this sentiment of the modern urban space, Juan Villoro
asserts that “la descripción de la ciudad como caótica no implica por fuerza una crítica ni un lamento
desesperado. Se trata, más bien, de un retrato de su peculiar condición operativa” (El Olvido 17).
181
necessary. These questions of composition are asked and answered by Ana Clavel in Los
deseos y su sombra.
Born in 1961, Clavel has been considered to belong to what critical circles have
called New Mexican Narrative and gains literary accolades in the 1980s with the publication
of two collections of short stories. Los deseos y su sombra is the author‟s first and is
reminiscent of the Boom novels in its usage of plot fragmentation, multiple perspectives, and
a stream of consciousness narrative that invites the reader to decipher the many puzzles and
complexities in the text. As Jane Elizabeth Lavery notes, Los deseos y su sombra is “notable
for its dialogic richness, interweaving the historical, the fictional, and the fantastic” (1068).
The use of the fantastic and hints of magical realism situate her amongst contemporaries such
as Ana García Bergua, Adriana González Mateos and Cecilia Eudave, all of whom Ana Rosa
Domenella defines as “autoras neofantásticas” (353). The critic affirms that the fantastic in
Clavel is not necessarily the mixture of realities or paradigms, but is instead a focus on the
body as a fantastical creation that can be played with, teased, and molded into whatever we
want.
The novel traces the life of Soledad García, a young, introspective and precocious girl
who lives in Mexico City from the 1950s through the 1980s.96 The timeframe of the novel
96
A discussion on the narrative changes seen in Mexico City through the second half of the twentieth century
would not be complete without a reference to José Emilio Pacheco‟s Las batallas en el desierto (1981). Noting
the textual development of Carlos throughout Las batallas en el desierto, Beatriz Barrantes-Martín argues that
the development of narrated self runs parallel to the development of the narrated cityspace. She notes that the
city and Carlos are spatial recipients of the changes brought about by globalization and urbanization in the postWar period, observing that “el proceso de transculturación sufrido por el país, en el cual el precio de la
tecnologización y el progreso son una galopante norteamericanización” (25).
The rupture from a binary optic of national space, more importantly, signals the positioning of Mexico
City within a global discourse of the metropolis and its subsequent impact on the role of the urban conjectures
of human and planetary futures. The city as a burgeoning metropolis comes under the microscope in the 1990s
as it experiences a boom in local artists and writers who take to the streets to find inspiration and to chronicle
their reality. If the earlier works mentioned here problematized the urban as a space of cohabitation between
different groups and ideas, the 1990s evidence as axiomatic the animalistic, organic, and converging nature of
182
reflects a period rife in social and economic change in Mexico, problematized by internal
migrations and the setting up of industrial centers sustained by foreign investment.97
Blending temporalities and levels of lucidity, the text explores the life of Soledad as she
negotiates the streets and spaces of the city in a process of self identification. The body-city
metaphor which is a leitmotiv in many contemporary fictions is taken to a fantastic level as
the body-text and city-text (remember that both are semiotic products and games) are
entangled in a chicken versus the egg dialectic of causality that escapes the simple
metonymization of space that was evident in more naturalist literature. Soledad talks of her
childhood, her revolutionary father, the brother of her best friend who was killed in the 1968
student revolts, and of the mysterious Desconocido who repeatedly rapes and molests her in
her youth. As an adult, the narrative picks up from her relationship with a visiting Hungarian
photographer, Peter Nagy, who abandons her in Mexico when he leaves for his homeland.
Soledad spirals swiftly into a self-destructive gloom of loneliness, lyrically evocative of her
own name. She fools her mother and brother into thinking that she has been given a
scholarship to study abroad and instead takes up a photo-archival job in the Palacio de Bellas
Artes. It is as an adult that the narrative diverges into the fantastic as the reader is left to
Mexico City. The question now focuses on what is to come from this thirdspace, as in Homero Aridjis‟s ¿En
quién piensas cuando haces el amor? (1996), Mexico City mutates into a futuristic dystopia that takes its last
breaths through the narrative voice of its female narrator, Yo Sánchez. The novel ends with the destruction of
the city and the dawn of the new era, signaling an authorial disdain of the technocratic processes of
modernization that came with renewed urbanization in the 1990s.
97
The sociological work done by Jonathan Kandell and Judith Adler Hellman prove interesting in
understanding this shift towards synekism that occurs from the 1960s onwards. They study the demographic
cephalization that resulted in massive waves of urban migration that intensified in the 1980s. The move towards
urban living is stressed by Hellman who observes that only 35% of the population in the early 80s lived in rural
areas with the majority being concentrated in nodal centers such as Mexico City. Similarly, internal migration is
explained by Kandell: “The migrants were expelled from the countryside by prolonged droughts, the inability of
ejidos (communal farms) to sustain families, the mechanization of private farms, and the growing population
resulting from health care improvements that cut mortality rates of infants and adults” (186-187).
183
decipher whether Soledad is alive or dead, as she is suddenly able to walk unnoticed through
the city.
Keeping the dematerialization of the female body in mind, Luzma Becerra argues that
the novel undertakes a “desprendimiento de la realidad, sin que llegue a desaparecer un „estar
ahí‟” (370). Through the narrative of Soledad, Clavel succeeds in hazing the limits of space
but we are never fully disarticulated from a narrative of the city or a city-text per se. Space
and the city, after all, are central to Clavel‟s positioning of Soledad in relation to other
characters in the novel. From the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Castillo de Chapultepec the
protagonist centers the expansive and multiplicitous city through a narrative and diegetic
telephoto lens that establishes its spaces as the canvas that must and will be painted over by
Soledad. Keeping this conception of spatiality in mind, Becerra observes that “la historia de
Los deseos y su sombra reelabora un contexto cultural, que es el de un imaginario femenino
con su educación tradicional en lo referente al registro genérico” (372). The novel‟s narrative
trajectory is mapped out as Soledad constructs a fake world in response to the weight of
patriarchal systems; an alternate mapped out space with the individual as the sole
cartographic referent and the locating device of language as an obfuscated medium of finding
and plotting points of contact between the multiple worlds that Clavel‟s protagonist
negotiates.
A similar deconstruction and simultaneous reconstruction of Mexico City occurs in
Juan Villoro‟s Materia dispuesta (1996). Conforming to what can be called a failed
bildungsroman, Villoro interweaves the maturation of his protagonist, Mauricio Guardiola,
with the development of Mexico City from the 1960s to 1980s. Masculinity is an ontological
concern in Villoro‟s narrative as Mauricio is never worried about belonging to a fixed sexual
184
identity (Deleuze 27). He is attracted to both men and women, and differentiates himself
from his nation-building architect father who shows a renewed commitment to making the
city more “Mexican.” The father as a purveyor of a planned-out city that adheres to aesthetic
ideals of identity catalyzes the failure of controlling the urban in Mexico City as his models
and designs fall through. His physical body is symbolic of this failure when he drunkenly
exclaims to his son: “no tengo verga. No se me para” (291). The novel concludes with the
1985 earthquake that rocked the city with a magnitude of 8.1 on the Richter scale. Villoro‟s
dematerialization of Mexico City is brought to a close by the romance between the
amorphous protagonist and a neighborhood girl who spent her youth in a coma. Their
foundational romance sparks the portrayal of a city that is fractured, shapeless, and lost
without identity.98
Los deseos y su sombra focuses on the elements and voices of society that hegemonic
power chooses to silence or ignore, but which can very easily upset the status quo. These
groups, which Edward Said denotes as the “ignored group” (“Foreword” v), represent the
oppressed, desobjectified and unprivileged sectors that Ramírez shockingly put to ink in Pu
(1979); they are the masses who migrated to and subsist in Mexico City.99 But Clavel does
98
The dissolution of the cityspace into a polymorphic void that resists quantification is suggested in Villoro‟s
novel, but is an active reality in Margarita Mansilla‟s Karenina Express (1995) and Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me
verá llorar (1999). In the former that mixes four narratives through the metafictional reference to Tolstoy‟s
classic Anna Karenina (1873) the city becomes a blur that is lost in a moment of motion, or as Debra Castillo
notes, “like the fragmented meta-self, it is everywhere, and everywhere dispersed” (94). The idea of space is
deterritorialized as larger questions of language, representation, literature and globality come into play.
99
Mapping as a narrative necessity is performed by Ramírez through the visual descriptions that are generated
from a first-person journey through the city‟s roadways. The cityspace is organic in the sense that it can only be
accessed through this over-ground network of pavement that breathes life into the notion of a dual Mexico City
that deviates from firstspace conceptions of the urban. The author‟s take on the city and its spaces, more
importantly, shakes to the foundation the neoliberal McOndo ideas of globalized spaces in contemporary Latin
America. Writing decades before Fuguet and his contemporaries, Ramírez points to the already existing schism
between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the invisible, that exists in the 1970s with the shift towards
urbanization and the rupture of a civilización and barbarie topography for the national imaginary.
185
not perform a textual ventriloquism of their voices, as she instead focuses her attention on
making Soledad a metonymic and corporal representation of the fractured city and its voices.
The novel becomes, therefore, an authorial and reader-intense activity of unearthing the truth
about Soledad and/or the city and all that it represents, leading Lavery to hypothesize:
The unknowability of her truth becomes inextricably interconnected with
the text‟s comments on historic reality, symbolically illustrating that what we
might perceive as reality or „truth‟ is ultimately an imaginative construct […] Even
though historical realities are subordinated to social and psychological issues,
the physical violence suffered by Soledad and various other characters reflects
the experiences of silenced Mexicans under the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI: Partido Revolucionario Institucional) between the 1950s and 1980s.
(1054)
The role of gender within Clavel‟s greater literary endeavor is evident in the choice of a
female character who actively perambulates through the defined city as observed from the
Palacio and Castillo. Establishing an alternative understanding of the nation and its history
necessarily debunks traditional patriarchal and phallogocentric conceptions of state.100 The
reimagining of society in turn sets up an analogous process within an understanding of the
subject as traditional ideas of gender are discarded.
Stemming from the early memories of intercourse with the Desconocido, which go
unexplained and without much detail, Soledad‟s journey of self-discovery forces Clavel to
conceive a non-patriarchal notion of female subjectivity vis-à-vis the city. This exercise is
keeping with broader trends of understanding the city/self and the positioned subject in its
streets and barrios that can be observed in Luis Zapata‟s novel, though in Clavel it is a
100
For a complete understanding of Mexican masculinity in relation to the state and nationalism, please see
Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba‟s Modernity and the Nation (2007), where he argues that through a practice of
sensuality and violence representations of masculinity and the male body abound in the historical period of
modernization in the 20th century.
186
distinct process in that the urban subject is a female.101 Lavery comments upon this
difference as she explains that the protagonist‟s journey and “remapping of her own body in
the megalopolis feminizes the traditional male quest in the Mexican urban novel. The notion
of the city as a whore, which provides the space for male journeys over what is depicted as
prostrate female terrain, continues to hold sway in Mexico‟s masculine literary (postcolonial)
imagination” (1056).
Following a Kristevan understanding of the subject as being in process, Lavery
analyzes the text in relation to the formation of the female, without necessarily unearthing a
critical interest in Soledad‟s space. The critic does, however, open a pathway into an
understanding of the city as a patriarchal stronghold when she comments that “the foundation
of the city is intimately connected to the cartography of male desire, where man writes the
body of the other (woman) and brutally inscribes upon it his own history” (1056). These
centers of patriarchy, or closely delineated topographies that capture phallocentric power, are
pervasive and effluent in Los deseos y su sombra.
The bodies that capture and perpetuate phallocentrism as a cultural and national
paradigm begin in the ubiquitous space of the household through the figure of Soledad‟s
mother, Carmen. After the death of her husband she reminds Soledad that her brother is now
the man of the house and must be respected, and that she as a girl must fit into the role
101
In the works of Luis Zapata during the 1970s, for example we see a narrative focus on identity that is painted
onto the cityspace as a heteroglossic and heterotopic textual canvas. The author engages in the Barthesian
dialectic of space and autonomous human subject, as both participate in a conversation that defines the other. In
the classic El vampiro de la colonia Roma (1979), for example, Zapata‟s homosexual protagonist engages in a
picaresque promenade through the urban alleyways and habitats of Mexico City in search of sexual
gratification. Zapata‟s literary exercise has been touted as groundbreaking in the expression of Mexican
homosexuality, with his earlier Hasta en las mejores familias (1975) setting a narrative tone of self and spatial
exploration that will continue throughout his work. His writing of Mexico City as a signifier and signified of
identity is evident in La hermana secreta de Angélica María (1989) that narrates the coming-of-age story of a
young provincial boy.
187
afforded by patriarchy: “las niñas no hablan cuando están entre mayores, quietecita como una
muñeca de porcelana: si se mueve se rompe” (21). Carmen is strongly subservient to the
tenets of a heteronormative society controlled by the hegemonic imaginary of masculinity
that holds women below men in all measurable and intangible aspects. Men, in her
worldview, are always correct and knowing whereas women lack reason and subjectivity.
She also perpetuates the idea of public female genitalia, whether in form or use, as shameful
when she spies Soledad plumping her lips in front of a mirror. She tells her daughter to bite
her lips to make them seem smaller and less alluring. When Carmen demonstrates this to her
daughter she is described as having the mouth of a fish or a monkey, emphasizing Clavel‟s
authorial position that patriarchy and phallocentrism desubjectify women. They become
animals who cannot speak and communicate, part of the “ignored group” that aimlessly and
mechanically mull through the corridors of the city and keep it alive with their work, yet who
cannot and must not partake in its construction and spheres of influence. Carmen and
Soledad are, after all, the sole breadwinners in the family as they sell pastries and breads in
the local community.
The domestic space is controlled by the voice of patriarchy and not necessarily a
hegemonic male, as this latter subject position is reinforced by the chidings of the terrible
mother and not the heir to the phallocentric throne, Soledad‟s brother Luis, who prefers to
play football with his friends. His other pastimes include, however, an urban-style pack
mentality of attack as he joins other boys in hunting “un buen trasero, unos ojos soñadores o
un cabello suave” (47), reinforcing the traditional idea of the city as a whore to the urban
male subject. The outside space, which is to say the city-text that lies beyond the kingdom of
the domestic, is equally controlled by the marauding bodies of homosocial masculinity.
188
Soledad as a young girl feels trapped and asphyxiated in the busy commercial streets of the
center, as though “el espacio que ocupaba en el aire no le perteneciera” (16).
The city and its streets as being metonymic of a greater masculine force is hinted at
by Barthes in his suggestion that space too becomes a character when narrated. Clavel
personifies the urban as she describes how the city “despertaba, perezosa, en el valle: estiraba
los brazos de humo de sus fábricas, contoneaba las piernas de sus avenidas, se arrebujaba de
nuevo en las cúpulas de sus iglesias” (19). The succinct literary tool of personification gives
way to an understanding of the city not only as a character but also as a masculine entity that
is defined by its heteronormative components. Its anatomy is composed of the factories that
create economic wealth that enslaves the masses to what Connell terms transnational
business masculinity, or the rising hegemonic group that controls gender, political and
economic systems across national frontiers.102 Dressed in uniformed suits and deeply
interested in indiscriminate economic amassment, Connell‟s multinational masculinity has
loose sexual ethics and is purely concerned with the subjugation of others. The network of
streets and avenues calls attention to Soledad‟s inability to breathe outside and the actions of
the predatory urban homosocial groups that actively hunt women. Lastly, the church and its
resounding bells signal an understanding of the clerical binds that enslave the feminine and
non-heteronormative to ecclesiastical social doctrine.
The avenues of the public city-text furthermore establish a viaduct for hegemonic
control in the form of patrolling police troops. They are the city/body‟s antibodies that flow
through its arteries, identifying and eradicating all threats to the greater self. After Peter
leaves her and she spirals into a self-defeating depression, Soledad finds herself in the
102
This global incarnation of masculinity is further evoked in Carlos Labbé‟s Locuela (2009), Hernán
Rodríguez Matte‟s Barrio Alto (2004) and Maurice Echeverría‟s Diccionario Esotérico (2006) amongst others.
189
company of a blind man (Matías), a young mime (Jorge), and a group of street urchins who
regularly steal and use intravenous drugs. In one of the group‟s adventures Jorge calls them
to a halt as he notices a truck slowly approach, with:
[H]ombres que colgaban de los estribos y mostraban sin pudor los brazos desnudos y
amenazantes, el gesto fiero y desvergonzado del que sabe el increíble poder de la
violencia de su parte. No levantaron a nadie pero se paseaban alardeando por aquella
avenida tan cercana a la Plaza de la Constitución con la prepotencia que les otorgaba
esa cara siniestra de la represión y el terror instituidos como medidas de orden y
seguridad social. (262)
The circulatory agents of hegemonic masculinity, as identified by Clavel, are even able to see
the ghostly Soledad though they only sense her presence and not her actual corporality. They
are responsible for keeping order and peace, which can alternatively be interpreted as
keeping the silence and ignored under the yoke of economic and social modernization that
was politically, and still is, promulgated. The author‟s description of these hegemonic agents
is visual in that it establishes an aesthetics of virility that privilege the strong masculine body
over the lanky and effeminate mime and the blind Matías. The text further visualizes a spatial
position of this interaction between the hegemonic and the oppressed in a topographic
relation to the Plaza de la Constitución, or what is commonly known today as the Zócalo, the
main square in the center of historic Mexico City, which has served as the heart of
government of both the nation and the capital and where popular protests have often taken
place. In the exchange between the police and Soledad, Los deseos y su sombra is careful in
its mapping of the subject and subjectivities in relation to a territorialized spatial referent that
underscores the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and the national imaginary. The
police agents, corporal antibodies that circulate the veins and arteries of the city-body, keep
under control any threats to the national, which is to say Masculine, body that sustains the
country.
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The need to root the national imaginary within the masculine is further traced in the
textual placing of Soledad within the physical city when she discovers the Castillo de
Chapultepec. She brings to mind Chambers theory of the metropolis as myth when she
remembers “aquel niño héroe que se había arrojado envuelto en la bandera nacional” (17).
Clavel references the taking of the Castillo during the Mexican-American War by a band of
US Marines that stormed the building. During the conflict, six young Mexican cadets
valiantly defended the space (of the nation) from the foreigners, with one of them, Juan
Escutia, wrapping himself in the tricolored flag before throwing himself from its towers. This
much contested story has, however, come to form what Soledad calls “la necesidad de un
país de inventarse una historia admirable y prodigiosa” (17), which is necessarily bound to
the virile, youthful male.
The connection between nation and masculinity is further concretized in the Paseo de
la Reforma and the many statues and monuments that dot its 12 kilometer incursion into the
heart of the city. After leaving her mother and brother, Soledad routinely walks along the
Paseo‟s streets and plazas, stopping at the many statues that include monuments to the Niños
héroes. As she approaches the boulevard de los héroes, she engages in one of many moments
of existentialist pondering as she wonders: “¿Dejo de ser porque ellos no pueden verme? […]
¿Entonces esta ciudad existe o solo la imagino?” (197). This line of inquiry requires the
reader to pause and take a step back from the diegesis, if only for a moment, and ask
ourselves the same questions. This tangential exercise, however, permeates the passages that
follow, as Soledad walks amongst the statues and figures that adorn the metonymic space of
the nation in the city, “como una lección de historia tridimensional que ya pocos – o nadie –
leía” (197).
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Like in several other points of the narrative, Clavel situates her protagonist in a
topographic space that is pinpointed by statues which are “situados en lugares estratégicos
que obligaban a la vista a reparar en ellos” (198). It is the placing of a silenced, ignored
feminine subject in a spatial relationship vis-à-vis stone soldiers, politicians, and other primal
male figures of Mexican nationhood do we concretize Clavel‟s assertion that the city is an
intrinsically masculine space, and the boulevard of héroes, with its vertical epitaphs and
figures, is its particular physical and phallic contribution to the imagining of the nation. Each
statue with its inscription and historical note maps out another topography that places the
idea of Mexicanness on a polytemporal and polyspatial plane of discourse.
The blind Matías furthers this thesis in a story he tells Soledad and the street children,
one of the many short intertexts that populate Los deseos y su sombra. Here he recounts how
“México fue una ciudad vehemente como el deseo que le dió origen” (254), as its founding
originates in the dreams of a band of tribal hunters, evocative of Luis‟s own prowls through
the city-whore. He explains:
Vieron a una mujer que dormía en las aguas de un lago. Soñaron que la forzaban y
que ella, sin despertarse, respondía a sus caricias y a su violencia. La tomaban una y
otra vez pero ella no despertaba del sueño de agua y ellos en realidad no la poseían.
Al despertar, los cazadores buscaron aquel lago. Peregrinaron de un sitio a otro pero
no encontraron rastros del sueño y, en cambio su sed por la mujer iba en aumento.103
(255)
It is at this juncture in the tale do the men chance upon a valley surrounded by thick
vegetation and spy a woman asleep by a lake. They rush to posses her only to find that she is
nothing more than an illusion. The physical root of the mirage is where they decide to settle
103
The old man‟s story is a veiled reference to the role of the feminine in Mexican lore of origin, making
reference to the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl and the popular myth of La Llorona. The former represents the tropes
of motherhood and fertility whereas the latter consecrates the negative stereotype of the feminine in popular
culture. La Llorona, in particular, represents the archetypal evil woman who violates her role as mother and
wife (Candelaria 93).
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and to build a city that keeps present the woman‟s “caderas, el horizonte de su rostro, sus
párpados tenues” (255). The genesis of the urban space, from a textual standpoint, is further
described as being reflective of “la brutalidad del asedio, la violencia al someterla” (255),
reinforcing Lavery‟s hypothesis of the city as a whore, and Paz‟s idea that Mexican identity
is best captured by the void left by the abject mother, as he explains that “la cuestión del
origen es el centro secreto de nuestra ansiedad y angustia” (84).
The narrative side-trip into Matías‟s interpretation of the history of the city keeps
with the characterization of the urban as a metonymic construct of the hegemonic masculine
and as a terrain that keeps those gendered bodies that do not conform to its rules in bondage.
Clavel addresses the mythopoetic conceptions of the metropolis by acknowledging a nonSpanish past to the city, much like the philandering bus ride in Ramírez‟s Pu establishes an
indigenous epistemology of space. She acknowledges popular myths of an underground
Indian city below the roads patrolled by the current government‟s police forces as Soledad‟s
work involves her photographing the subterranean recesses of the Palacio de Bellas Artes
under the direction and supervision of Martín Rueda, a rich, omnipotent and sexually
predatory businessman that embodies many of the characteristics that form Connell‟s
contemporary hegemonic variant of globalized, neoliberal masculinity. He is physically fit
and virile with well-manicured fingernails that stress the importance of hygiene as
ontological to modernity and modernization. He is quick to undermine the rights of workers
and does not hesitate to flirt with a young girl who enters a café holding hands with her
boyfriend. His eagle-like looks and stares, which cause discomfort in Soledad, contextualize
him within a given space as the alpha hunter in the urban jungle where omega packs of youth
like Luis and his friends hunt.
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His subjectivity vis-à-vis the Masculine city is highlighted when he has Soledad go
below the floors of the Palacio to unearth its history. It is in these subterranean rooms and
spaces, which Clavel describes in great (visual) detail, does Soledad reveal that the buried
past of the city, like the myths of foundation that Matías perpetuates, are truly masculine
spaces. Even if they originally were not controlled by heteronormative gendered bodies, they
are now, as the many workers who regularly use the tunnels overwrite its walls and spaces
with their phallic sexuality. She describes how the men play football and get drunk in the
underground rooms, leaving pools of urine and “carteles de mujeres desnudas y hermosas”
(137) pasted onto the walls. It is this underworld space, the prehistoric antecedent to modern
day Mexico City that Rueda wants catalogued by Soledad‟s camera, as though through her
prints he can gain discursive control over the past. After all, don‟t the erected statues that dot
the streets of the city do just that?
The subterranean space within the national imaginary holds a sacred position of
origin that Ramírez‟s indigenous men were quick to point out to the Caucasian woman they
beat and raped in Pu. The need to look under the hood of the city is summarized by Villoro,
who argues that “la operación literaria de buscar el esqueleto urbano, el paisaje fosilizado
bajo las apariencias, ha sido común a escritores [contemporáneos]” (El Olvido 30). In Los
deseos y su sombra, an older worker at the Palacio talks to Soledad about the possibility of an
underground city, which is brought up repeatedly by different characters as a mythological
edenic answer to Paz‟s hypothesis of Mexican identity. The older worker, Gallegos,
dismisses the underground city as “puras fantasías inventadas por la gente” (173). But the
repetition of a space below the three-dimensional city-text is pertinent to any post-modernist
understanding of the urban, as the present is invariably built upon and/or added to past
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structures, ideas, and paradigms. Clavel is aware of the importance of an underground as a
textually powerful referent to the overground, which is to say the modern city, as a mapping
of what lies below leads to a more holistic understanding of the city. Recurring again to a
biological metaphor, it is only through an understanding of circulatory/digestive/endocrine
systems that we can understand the human body/city and its many ailments. To take this line
of inquiry a step further, we can argue that it is only through a knowledge of the body‟s
genome, which is to say the ontological and epistemological center that defines the
phenotype, can we completely understand human and animal anatomy. Clavel works with
this metaphor as her text does not stop at simply naming the city-text, but instead shows a
precocious yearning to go deeper and to understand the how and why the city is and
becomes.
This narrative concern is first suggested by the underground city in Los deseos y su
sombra and is further hinted at during Soledad‟s childhood in the company of Miguel, her
friend Rosa‟s brother. It is within the domestic space of feminine subjugation to the phallus
does Soledad contemplate an existence as a man, with a penis and the ability to “caminar
rumbo al baño de hombres para sellar esa alianza de sexos que se da de mingitorio a
mingitorio, sin paredes ni compartimentos aislados como los de mujeres” (48). It is the public
space of the men‟s bathroom does Soledad hypothesize that masculine and patriarchal power
emanates from, as it is a privileged and ubiquitous spatial position that genders the city-space
through its expression, akin to a gene innocuously located on the double helix. It is this
genomic understanding of the city-text, combined with a circulatory understanding of its
roads and underground tunnels that suggests to be most fruitful to Clavel‟s existential
quandary, but we are left asking for more as the articulation of the phallogocentric and
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phallocentric city becomes inevitably linked to the dismembering of the female subject and
the analogous demystification of the masculine landscape, stopping short any exploration of
the underground and the bathroom within Los deseos y su sombra.
The ghost-like state of Soledad that hinges between lunacy and sanity is exemplified
in the conversations she holds with the statue of Leandro Valle in the Paseo de la Reforma.
By giving the statue speech, by removing it from the silenced and manipulated bodies that
the Masculine controls, Clavel demystifies the position of the male hero within the national
imaginary. This desecration is carried out to full force when Soledad describes how the statue
has had its sword removed, dismembering its military garb and effectively castrating the hero
as a bastion of masculine patriotism. The castration of the phallocentric figure is taken a step
further when it is revealed that the street named after him in Mexico City is now a home to
prostitutes and drug dealers. This plotting of the road vis-à-vis the patriotic national
imaginary is poignant in the sense that Clavel remaps or resemanticizes the hegemonic
strategy of naming roads and streets within a privileged politico-historic discourse.104 The
statues are further removed from a phallic position of power as the groups of street children
and Jorge mock their poses. Forever conscious of the textual power of cartography, Clavel
astutely places the performative pantheon of children and mime in a spatial juxtaposition to
“las estatuas de soldados que vigilaban desde las cornisas de Palacio como gárgolas
fantasmales” (273), thereby calling attention to the demystification of the Masculine that is
attempted in Los deseos y su sombra.
104
A similar remapping of the city occurs in Maurice Echeverría‟s Diccionario Esotérico, where Guatemala
City is reconceived as the sociopathic narrator‟s “Playground.” Similar to Clavel‟s mission in Los deseos y su
sombra, Echeverría creates an alternative space, mapped over the grid of the city to locate his serial-killing
protagonist. The similarities in regards to space end there, as the Guatemalan writer employs a narrativization of
the city that better resembles the organic and atextual spaces of Cuerpo náufrago.
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This process is central to the figure of Soledad as she evidences a childhood struggle
with the maternal voice of patriarchy that continues throughout her adult years. The search
for identity and Soledad‟s resultant inability to recognize herself as a whole subject is
reinforced by “metaphors of the female body as abject, disfigured, and grotesque” (Lavery
1062). Soledad‟s break from the patriarchal occurs as she breaks from her mother when the
latter tells her to pinch her lips shut lest they should resemble genitalia. The protagonist‟s
search for identity and independence is only realized when she is able to separate herself
from her mother in this scene which is reminiscent of a Lacanian Mirror Stage where the ego
gains wholesomeness from a méconnaissance of a reflected ego ideal. It is the recognition of
herself as an individuated body, away from the hold of her mother and the voice of
patriarchy, does Soledad gain footing in the realm of subjectivity. But the process of
identification results from her suggestions of autoerotism that evoke an incestuous desire as
her factions strongly resemble the father. Soledad resists complete identification and instead
participates in a Kristevian subject-in-process model of formation, which leads Lavery to
observe that Soledad “comes to embody the abject itself, oscillating ambiguously between
life and death […] between the fully and partially formed subject, the semiotic and symbolic”
(1060).
The dismembered feminine subject is further brought into tension by the series of
relationships Soledad has with men. From the violent encounters with the unnamed and
undifferentiated Desconocido, to the boyfriends of friends that she ruthlessly beds, Soledad
lacks a centripetal force of self in relation to the masculine. She is never an independent
subject in relation to the male, as though she never fully succeeds in silencing the maternal
call to subservience and phallic adoration. The idea of desire, which often holds a central
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position in Soledad‟s existential musings, is defined by a lack and a void, and not another
gendered body or fetish that points to an unresolved unconscious drive. The novel is instead a
story about the undefined shadows of desire, and more importantly about the unresolved
desire of disappearing which is repeated throughout the text. The latter is a physical and at
times metaphysical wish, as the protagonist engages in a continuous entanglement and desire
of detachment from the power of masculinity as inscribed onto the city and society.
The dissolution of the feminine body becomes intrinsically connected to the author‟s
attempts at dissecting and disarticulating the cityspace, particularly through the spatialization
of Soledad‟s relationship with Peter Nagy in Mexico City. After he leaves her to return to his
native Hungary, the text hints at a slow desubjectification of the body (and city) as Soledad
notices that “las manos se le despellejaron” (73). The practice of corporal representation is
stitched to a formation of the city-text, as Soledad wonders, “¿cómo describir esa ciudad en
aquellos días posteriores a su abandono?” (73). Space, like her body, enters an existential
purgatory of being and not-being as she explains “a donde pusiera la mirada, los edificios y
las calles, los cafés y galerías por donde con frecuencia deambulaban y por donde vagó
después solitaria, adquirieron para ella una nubosidad escalofriante: tal era la sensación de
irrealidad, de caminar en falso, ajena por completo de sí misma” (73).
Though not representative of an indigenous hegemonic masculinity or homosocial,
Peter embodies the paternal voice that Carmen channels to her daughter at an earlier age. Far
from being a gender-enlightened body that understands systems of patriarchy to be unfair and
demeaning, Peter repeats the mantra that women must be held silenced and subjugated,
scolding Soledad when she asks him a question: “las niñas inteligentes sólo hablan si tienes
cosas importantes que decir” (75). As a foreigner, Peter initially represents a spatial escapism
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from the Masculine of Mexico City but he instead perpetuates an animalistic oppression of
the feminine. During intercourse, for example, he routinely penetrates Soledad‟s increasingly
fragile body from behind and enforces a role-playing relationship of dominator and
dominated with him occupying the former position. Parting from a master-slave relationship,
Soledad is further desubjectified as a woman when he offers her body to a friend, Montero, in
a triangular evocation of Eve Sedgwick‟s ideas of homosocial desire. The feminine is
sanitized under the guise of a nurse‟s uniform as Montero and Peter take turns penetrating
Soledad. The final stroke of feminine dismemberment occurs one night as the three
characters engage in a ménage à trois and Peter penetrates Soledad but concentrates his
desire on their moving shadows and not her curves and touches, putting forward the thesis
that Soledad‟s body stops existing on a physical and metaphysical plane.
The departure of Peter coincides with a self-imposed exile on the part of Soledad
from her family and work into the streets of Mexico City that begin to lose shape and
definition as her own body slowly begins to dematerialize. The body and city are further
undefined by the narrative inclusion of a large Chinese vase that houses Soledad‟s alter ego,
Lucía, and an angry red dragon that makes several appearances in the novel during moments
of crisis. The fragile yet paradoxically extensive space of the vase becomes both a metaphor
of her body and the city she maps out as she observes that “la ciudad y sus calles podrían
convertirse en un laberinto propio y quién sabe, tal vez podría encontrar, a la vuelta de una
esquina, más que el dragón o a Lucía, su rostro verdadero” (213). This confusion of outside
and inside spaces, of the body-text and the city-text, is underlined by Soledad‟s repeated
refusal to be mapped as a subject within the city as she emphasizes her invisibility and lack
of belonging to the social and spatial milieu of contemporary Mexico City. Paradoxically,
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this refusal proposes a narrative quandary in Los deseos y su sombra as it is only by means of
Soledad‟s positioning in relation to the Plaza, Castillo and Palacio amongst other buildings
do we gain access to Mexico City as a narrated city-text. Soledad‟s refusal almost engages
the protagonist in a textual duel with the author who can only gain narrative admission to the
city through the eyes of the usurper, highlighting Clavel‟s own inability to fully articulate a
break from masculine codes and phallocentric representations of the city.
A strategy of breaking from the hegemonic and Masculine city is evoked towards the
end of the novel as Soledad imagines a heavenly angel descending upon avenida 20 de
Noviembre. She notes how “por un momento, ese instante único entre la nueva inmovilidad
del ángel y la celeridad retomada de la avenida, […] habría podido jurar que la gente había
atisbado un rincón del Paraíso” (259). But this process of separation from phallogocentric
codes is not taken to fruition as Soledad slips further into the realms of lunacy and
depression. We can observe the usage of this strategy by another female author, Gioconda
Belli, whose narratives are strongly territorialized within the masculine city. Beginning with
La mujer habitada (1988) to El pergamino de la seducción (2005), Belli‟s women are
strongly aware of the city as a gendered and genderizing construct. It is only in her remake of
the biblical genesis in El infinito en la palma de la mano (2008) does the Nicaraguan writer
succeed in debunking phallogocentric practices and dethroning hegemonic masculinity from
its semiotic and symbolic position of societal power. This inversion of power, which is to say
a spatial remapping and replotting in reference to a pre-edenic space, however, does not
occur in Los deseos y su sombra, though Clavel hints at its possibility if only for a heavenly
moment.
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The process of gendered (un)becoming in Los deseos y su sombra is understood
through the placement of the subject within the textual construct of the city and its masculine
phenotype. Though Clavel hints at the underlying mechanisms and bodies of control in the
urban space, the reader is left with an existential text that ponders feminine subjectivity in the
light of phallic and phallocentric social codes. Clavel does, however, succeed in
demystifying the heteronormative city through an ontological metaphorization of the bodycity dialectic in the shape-shifting form of Soledad García. The protagonist ultimately
materializes within the diegesis when she poses for a photograph with Matías, Jorge and the
street urchins. The photographer composes a portrait of the silenced and ignored, and when
the photo is finally revealed, “los niños aparecieron más delgados que de costumbre, Jorge –
que se había movido en el último momento – se veía desafocado y Matías tenía los ojos en
blanco. La única figura favorecida […] resultó ser una muchacha que de seguro pasaba por
ahí y que la cámara había captado en la última fracción de segundo” (304).
The materialization of Soledad analogously rearticulates the city as a stronghold of
patriarchy and hegemonic (and multinational) masculinity as the metaphysical questions
posed by the text conform to an aesthetics of definition that do not break from the established
order of the symbolic. Soledad as a subject in process is resubjectified in the epilogue to Los
deseos y su sombra, which in turn functions as a diegetic epitaph for the protagonist. We
learn that her mother contacts the “Centro Nacional para la Localización de Personas
Desaparecidas y Extraviadas” (307), a fictitious though official-sounding organization that is
a social arm of the Law and the hegemonic forces that patrol the streets of the city-text. The
organization continues the mapping process that Soledad began by pasting posters describing
her and the conditions of her disappearance around the city, emphasizing the corporality and
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substantiality of the cityspace vis-à-vis the living Soledad. The posters specify the 23rd of
June, 1985 as the day of her disappearance, which coincides with the terrorist bombing of an
Air India plane. More relevantly, however, the date coincides with the first Reunión Nacional
sobre Movimientos Sociales y Medio Ambiente at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México, signaling a tangential connection between Soledad and the rise of an interest in
urbanization and its effects within Mexico in the mid-1980s after decades of urban migration
and sprawl. The date underscores an authorial preoccupation with the concept and writing of
space in relation to patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity in the processes of self and
national identity formation and individuation.
The novel, however, refuses to close the chapter on Soledad and her city by simply
explaining in the epilogue that she is a runaway with possible mental conditions. Writing on
the importance of the epilogue, Randolph Pope argues that its pages often negate the
aesthetic and/or ethical standpoints of the corpus of the novel (116). This, in turn, would call
to attention the failed purpose of disarticulating the subject and the city to unearth a deeper
understanding of self that is unaffected by the hegemonic voice. Any such freedom is only
achieved momentarily with the attempted remapping of the space onto a biblical framework
that escapes the genderization of the urban. What signals a final confrontation to this voice of
authority, and what constitutes another usurpation of authorial control over the text, occurs
when the epilogue notes how on one poster someone writes a graffiti that challenges the
official discourse of the Centro Nacional. Written in a rush, it reads: “Su cuerpo no la
contiene” (307), suggesting that after all Soledad may have been dematerialized, just as the
text as a narrative exercise succeeds in unearthing the vestiges and clues of hegemonic
masculine genomic control over the urban space, and its phenotypic representations of power
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that ensure the economic, political, and social subjugation of non-hegemonic voices and
groups. The graffiti as an unauthorized textuality codifies a counter-voice to Clavel‟s own
authority as Soledad may have escaped the confines of her physical form that visually and
socially ascribe her to a social position vis-à-vis the erotics of Mexican culture.
More than anything we realize that once the city is written, plotted out, and
spatialized, once exposed to the power channels and controls of hegemonic masculinity, it
cannot be easily dislocated or disarticulated. The epilogue as textual challenge, and the final
piece of graffiti, however, give us hope that a textual deconstruction of the city as metonymic
and allegoric hegemonic masculinity is a possibility. The metropolis in Los deseos y su
sombra is a cognitive step towards the representation of a post-metropolitan space that is
conscious of the various and varying layers, tangents, and points of power that constitute
modern urban textual spatializations.
This model or conception of the city in relation to masculinities is, however,
dependent upon a cultural geography that relies on a reading of space as constituted by signs
and signifiers without taking into account any external or outside force that interrupts pure
signification. In Los deseos y su sombra we evidence a critical opposition to the idea of city
as text as noted by the failure of the epilogue to capture the non-hegemonic body from flight.
The conclusion to Clavel‟s first novel begs the question, how else can space in relation to
gender be conceived, if not as a polymorphous text?
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Plotting Masculinity and Conceiving the Virtual in Cuerpo náufrago
For Henri Lefebvre, the relationship between the spatial city and the individual
subject can be thought of in a hermeneutic sense, where the interpretive objective is
“conceiving the city as a semantic system […] arising from linguistics, urban language, or
urban reality as a grouping of signs” (108). If the city is therefore thought of as a text, then
the reading of its signifiers and semantic systems opens up a cartographic project where the
mapping of the literary subject underscores a process of identity and identification. The
super-imposition of the subject onto this space, however, forces a situating within the pluridimensional tangents of power, as Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift argue, “power – whether
organized through knowledge, class, „race‟, gender, sexuality and so on – is (at least partly)
about mapping the subject; where particular sites – for example, the body, the self and so on
– become „points of capture‟ for power” (13). But how is this power articulated? How are
these bodies or points of capture signified when the semantic system of mapping the city-text
fails?
The words of Lefebvre have been cited by a plethora of theorists who define the
physical space as a textually mapped out discourse that permits spatialized subjectifcation,
but as the conclusion to the last section indicates, this model often falls short of truly
understanding a praxis of identity. The geographic reliance on signifiers is challenged by
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
(1987) where they map out an alternative paradigm of non-axiomatic geophilosophical
thought to conceive of and construct space and spatial relationships. Taking the city to be a
point of stratification, which is to say a process where the implantation and territorialization
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of codes forms new dominating bodies, the two philosophers argue that the intensive or
internal processes of these positions of stability must first be unearthed and plotted. In a freeflowing, often repetitive style of writing, Deleuze and Guattari propose that the congealing of
intensive, far-from-equilibrium processes is a temporary fixing as these structures, such as
the city are always subject to the flight of particles away from the construction. Clavel‟s
protagonist in Los deseos y su sombra functions as a metonymic representation of this
renegade particle as the final words of the epilogue suggest that she has escaped the system
and that the city as a structure has been uncongealed and is again an unstratified body.
Ana Clavel‟s Cuerpo náufrago undertakes an écriture hermaphrodite that recounts
the life of Antonia, a woman who wakes up one morning as a man, Antón. Employing nontraditional and transgressive narratives that explore the constructs of desire, gender, and love,
Clavel‟s novel of sexual metamorphosis builds on her previous work in Los deseos y su
sombra, where the female body is mapped onto the cartographic referent of Mexico City.
Though Los deseos y su sombra conceptualizes a dark and mysterious center to the city,
Cuerpo náufrago avoids the cartographic and textual details of streets and alleys. Clavel,
after all, is an urban writer, though the term “urban writing” in contemporary Latin America
is redundant given the socioeconomic changes of the last quarter century. The author, as
Deborah Parsons explains, “is not only a figure within a city; he/she is also the producer of a
city, one that is related to but distinct from the city of asphalt, brick, and stone, one that
results from the interconnection of body, mind, and space, one that reveals the interplay of
self/city identity” (1).
This interconnection is explored by the character of Antonia/Antón who awakes one
morning with a decidedly masculine body. Prior to the textual autoscopic doubling, the
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protagonist linguistically reaffirms her identity, stressing the third-person, singular feminine
pronoun and adding, “no cabía duda sobre su sexo, aunque las presiones de la época
contribuyeran a que asumiera otros roles” (11). Clavel‟s text reveals the other side of the
crisis of masculinity that I discuss in the introduction to these pages, as women have
similarly faced a disruption of the roles and avatars they are allowed in daily life. The
emphasis on the pronoun “ella” underscores a textual preoccupation with the signifiers of
gender, re-elaborating Judith Butler‟s quandary at the end of Gender Trouble that serves as
an epigraph: “¿Cómo figura un cuerpo en su superficie la invisibilidad misma de su
profundidad escondida?” (9).105 Starting with this thought, it is evident that Clavel seeks to
question the ontological integrity of the gendered-subject, as she places emphasis on the
performative aspects of gender. It is not so much the new physical appendage that changes
Antonia, but the way that she must now dress and behave that triggers a crisis of identity.106
The character reaffirms Butler‟s thought that “if external genitalia were sufficient as a
criterion by which to determine or assign sex, the experimental research into the master gene
[of gender] would hardly be necessary at all” (147).
Antonia questions the physicality of identity and challenges Butler‟s assertion that
bodies do matter, asking if “¿la identidad empieza por lo que vemos?” (12). She is quick to
suggest an alternative to the performativity of identity, suggesting that “la identidad empieza
105
The critical work done on Clavel‟s novel is scant. Rodrigo Díaz Cruz‟s essay “La huella del cuerpo.
Tecnociencia, máquinas y el cuerpo fragmentado” focuses on the cultural construct of the human body, as he
undertakes an archaeology of the body from philosophical and sociological schools of thought. The critic,
however, leaves untouched the porcelain bodies in Cuerpo náufrago that play a definitive role within the
diegesis and Clavel‟s larger treaty on Mexican identity.
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Oswaldo Estrada‟s essay on Clavel, Rivera Garza and Rosa Beltrán is a useful genealogical referent for
Cuerpo náufrago as the critic establishes lines of similitude between Clavel and other women writers born in
the 1960s. He affirms that Clavel‟s novel works “in support of Butler‟s argument that we become subjects from
our performances and the performances of others towards us” (68).
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por lo que deseamos” (13), thereby creating a dialogic binarism that structures the pages of
Cuerpo náufrago. Is it the physical body and its composing behavior, or something more
intimate, innate, “secreta, persistente” (13) that defines gender? This line of inquiry is
interrupted, albeit momentarily, by the narrative need in Clavel to locate her narrative within
a topographic plane, to structure her musings in a space that can take as referents points of
capture for power that illuminate her thoughts. As in her other novels, the writer places the
subject within the streets of Mexico City, a real space that has been theoretically mapped out
by Saskia Sassen. Building on Edward W. Soja‟s ideas of the postmodern space where the
city “seems too limitless and constantly in motion […] too filled with „other spaces‟ to be
informatively described” (Postmodern Geographies 222), Sassen identifies Mexico City as a
postmodern space where the global city is a nexus for free-market (neoliberal) economic
practices and “a strategic site for disempowered actors because it enables them to gain
presence, to emerge as subjects, even when they do not gain direct power” (xxi).
The tangential lines of power are presented in Clavel‟s narrative as running through a
space for the male as a privileged subject, as Antonia recalls: “recordaba perfectamente de
niña envidiando a sus hermanos y a sus amigos de sus hermanos, esa manera de apoderarse
de una calle para jugar futbol, para salir solos por la ciudad sin correr tanto peligro” (13). She
contrasts the masculine position of power with a textual void in describing the role of the
female subject, as the feminine is only present in the public space through its absence. The
mapping of the gendered subject is congruent with the larger project of identity, as her
brothers‟ identities are based on their physical performances. They are allowed to
“engrasarse las manos y los pantalones al enderezar la cadena de una bicicleta o ponerse un
traje y sentirse importantes” (14).
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It is this public space that initiates a crisis in performativity in Antonia, as she realizes
that she must face the postmodern city. She prepares herself for the outside space by putting
on masculine clothing, and collecting her hair in “una coleta como las que la moda y los
tiempos se lo permitían a los hombres que se animaban a dejárselo crecer” (15). Note in
Antonia‟s preparation the acknowledgement that gender as a social construct is socially
constructed, and historically sensitive, echoing the theories of Butler. More importantly,
Antonia‟s preparation is a calculated step in a practice of mapping by Clavel, as the character
leaves her car keys behind as she “deseaba enfrentar la ciudad y la gente con sus propios
pasos” (15). The postmodern city that Antonia descends into is a space undergoing what
Fredric Jameson calls a crisis of boundaries where the borders and categories of space are
blurred. The indeterminate physical space in turn contributes to an indeterminacy of the
subject, as Jameson asks if this postmodern space does “not tend to demobilize us and
surrender us to passivity and helplessness, by systematically obliterating possibilities of
action under the impenetrable fog of historical inevitability?” (86).
From a feminist standpoint, Jameson‟s question incites a dialectic challenging of the
ontological “us” that is blurred in this process of late capitalism. After all, Clavel‟s Antonia
is aware that the postmodern space as a site of subjectivity, or as a theatre-stage on which the
body can perform gender, is inescapably articulated by the norms and codes of gender. From
experience, Antonia asserts that the streets of Mexico City are genderizing, as gender is
assigned by the body‟s ability to freely roam its streets and to serve as a nexus of
cartographic power. Challenging this disjunct, Kathleen Kirby argues that Jameson‟s “us” is
categorically masculine in nature, as the consciousness of corporeality experienced by the
postmodern subject due to the indefiniteness of his surrounding space is an extravagance that
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women have never been able to identify with. Women, Kirby argues, have consciously and
wearingly been aware of their embodiment, as articulated by Antonia‟s inability to place
herself within the streets of freedom experience by her brothers. Clavel‟s city-text is a
postmodern space that is negotiated differently by men and women, as Kirby notes:
For the man […] the most prominent feature of the landscape would be pathways,
along which he projects himself, making his world a space that returns to him a selfimage of movement, command […] For the woman […] I imagine a world structured
not by pathways but by obstacles […] rather than seeing how to get from „point A‟ to
„point B‟ I often see what is keeping me from getting there. (53)
This gender-nuanced reading of the postmodern city is problematized by Clavel‟s écriture
hermaphrodite, as Antonia never fully assimilates a gender identity and instead prefers a
playful, almost infantile attitude towards belonging to and defining the dichotomy. More
importantly, Antonia questions the existence of this dichotomy, which is inscribed onto the
city-text in the semantic code of “damas/caballeros” that meets her gaze when she needs to
use a public restroom.
The contrasting views of the postmodern city-text are encountered by Antonia/Antón
as she leaves the private space of her apartment for the public, Masculine of the city‟s streets.
She encounters a lady who attempts to seduce her, confirming that the physical disguise is
convincing. This encounter, furthermore, is highlighted by the woman‟s cleaning of the
streets by heaving pails of water onto them, emphasizing the mapped city-text and how this
space becomes a site of gender differentiation, as Antonia reflects on the failed seduction:
“¿De modo que así de fácil les resultaban las cosas para los hombres?” (19).
This over ground site of gender intercourse and gender differentiation, which is
primal to a reading and writing of Los deseos y su sombra, is left unexplored in Cuerpo
náufrago; Antonia‟s encounter with Enedina, the cleaning lady, is a spatial anomaly in the
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relationships that follow between Antonia/Claudia, Antonia/Malva, Antonia/Raimundo, and
Antonia/Paula, in that the brief encounter is the only affair that plays out in Clavel‟s textually
mapped city. The author follows the brief scene on the street with a narrative strategy that
invokes a cognitive understanding of the city as a textual construct. Antonia walks a few
blocks and finds herself at the entrance to the metro system. As the subject goes underground
the narrative leaves behind the streets, buildings and spaces of Mexico City. They do not
cease to exist, but are instead left unmapped by the narrative and by the literary subject. As
Antonia descends into the underground world of the metro, the narrative carries out an
inferential mapping of the subterranean non-city, a place that is ontologically metonymical of
the above-ground space. Antonia describes how “en el piso del corredor se extendían puestos
con mercancías diversas como en muchos de los accesos a la red de transporte subterráneo de
la ciudad de México” (21). The underground is a mirrored tracing of its above-ground spaces
and viaducts, and is similarly defined by the postmodern economic realities of Sassen‟s
global city where trade and commerce define the public space. The semiotic importance of
the metro system is commented by Villoro in El Olvido: Un itinerario urbano, where he
argues that “las obras públicas se conciben con frecuencia como una metáfora de la vialidad
y no como forma real de desplazamiento” (47).
On a further note, Clavel‟s placing of the subject in a terminus of the underground
space effectively maps out the rest of the above-ground city, as the reader is asked to superimpose a diagram of the city‟s transportation system over the narrative. Though Cuerpo
náufrago lacks the explicit mention of streets and spaces, the underground referent creates a
parallel, multidimensional schema that is reflective of the 280 miles of rail that run across the
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metro system.107 Furthermore, the Sistema de Transporte Colectivo Metro includes both
underground and aboveground stations that service the system‟s eleven lines. The mapped
space of the metro succeeds in organically composing Clavel‟s Mexico City, as the city in
Cuerpo náufrago is not brought into being by text but by a bodily system of transportation,
akin to the corporeal system of arteries and veins that lie beneath the surface of the gendered
body. Just as Clavel‟s narrative style is dependent on Butler‟s premise that bodies do matter,
the city is depicted as a physiological space that escapes the power of language as a codifier
of space. Mexico City exists in the text not as a city-text that is codified by language and
semantic codes, but as an extra-textual referent that is intertextually called into being by the
superimposition of the transportation map. It exists on another plane, away from the narrated
metro stops, but is never left out of the reader‟s consciousness.
This process gestures towards a virtualization of space that defers from the depiction
of Mexico City as an actual or stratified space in Los deseos y su sombra. The virtual, we
must remember, calls to attention the possible patterns and thresholds that arise in and from a
system through a Deleuzoguattarian appropriation of complexity theory as an ontological
tool of inquiry. As Bonta and Protevi note, the virtual in relation to space is often impossible
to access directly from the actual or the momentarily fixed stratified system. Parting from
107
Similar concerns with gender and masculinity in relation to space amount in Mario Bellatin‟s Queer classic
Salón de belleza (1994), which narrates the story of a transvestite hairstylist who converts her salon into a
purgatorial hospice for dying AIDS sufferers. Though positioned in reference to a large Latin American city
(that could equally be Mexico City or Lima), the novel chooses to disassociate a truly mapped-out space, and
defers to the spatial characterizations of self that Rivera Garza employs in Nadie me verá llorar. The salon is
ontological and epistemological to Queer identities whereas the city represents a jungle where non-Queer and
heteronormative masculinities are negotiated through the economic interactions with the visiting transvestites
who hunt married men on street corners and in movie theatres. The author calls to attention this
deterritorialization of space in an essay on writing where he reveals that the image that inspired him to pen
Salón de belleza was that of “peces atrapados en un acuario, suspendidos en un espacio artificial que poco tiene
que ver con el entorno real en que la pecera está colocada” (159). The narrative specificity of space, or more
accurately its lack of in Rivera Garza and Bellatin‟s work is emblematic of the first half of Soja‟s dialectic of
globalization that witnesses a hesitation to geographically and geopolitically locate narrative space.
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this idea, any access to the virtual city is almost impossible in Soledad‟s subject-plotting
across Mexico City-text. The evocation of the metro in Cuerpo náufrago, however, gestures
towards a non-textual city and thereby a virtual structure of the intensive morphogenetic
processes that sustain and form such substances (like gender) by “placing the variables
themselves in a state of continuous variation” (A Thousand Plateaus 369). This process
permits what Deleuze and Guattari call “nomad” or “minor” science, which Clavel
perpetuates in the novel through a mapping of the virtual realm that establishes “the existence
and distribution of the singularities (attractors and bifurcators; patterns and thresholds) of that
field by differentiation prior to integration, which establishes actual trajectories and the
precise nature of such singularities” (Bonta and Protevi 23).
The rhizomatic mapping and/or understanding of space in contrast to the discursive,
phenotypic praxis suggested by Barthes and Soja in Los deseos y su sombra underlines the
narrative disjunct between Clavel‟s two novels. The conclusion to the first suggests a
disillusionment with the idea of the city and body-text, brought to attention by the inability of
Soledad‟s physical body to contain her. The shift in Cuerpo náufrago to a Deleuzoguattarian
cartography of the city provides Clavel with the tools to explore and destabilize the control
exercised by hegemonic homosocial masculinity over Mexico City and its inhabitants.
This strategy gives way to Clavel‟s greater preoccupations of gender, the body and
identity, as she escapes the spatial naming that underscores Parson‟s self/city postulate. The
textual codes in Cuerpo náufrago are not so much preoccupied with the question of “does”
the city define gender and the Masculine but by the interrogative of “how.” The novel
escapes the self/city process that is characteristic of Mexican fiction, perhaps most
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controversially pursued in Armando Ramírez‟s Pu.108 Clavel‟s Cuerpo naúfrago takes for
granted the diegetic city, seducing the knowing reader to intertextually involve the city-text
as a system of signifiers, descriptions, and novels that emanate from the organic body that the
arterial metro maps-out. Clavel, more importantly, sidesteps the other organizational points
of class and race by focusing the above-ground narrative on specific sites that serve as
specimens or apparatus of capture in her écriture hermaphrodite. The apparatus, according to
Deleuze and Guattari, is an assemblage that captures localized territories by overwriting their
surfaces and pouring their flows into a centralized system. The bathroom becomes the
apparatus of capture for hegemonic masculinity across Clavel‟s two novels, though only fully
explored by an approximation to the virtual in Cuerpo náufrago.
From this vantage point the narrative proceeds to concentrate on spaces that delineate
the semanticization of gender in Mexico City. It is in this process does Clavel‟s autoscopic
protagonist gain access to the traditionally masculine space of the cantina where she shares a
beer with Francisco, a good friend from college. Their serendipitous meeting in the metro
reveals a diegetic doing of gender by Antonia that is rooted in her Quixotic reading and
acknowledgement of Amadís de Gaula as a stereotypic model of masculinity. Francisco‟s
presence in the narrative is equally Quixotic, as he functions as a dialectic Sancho Panza who
108
The writing of Mexico City is most polemic in the works of Armando Ramírez who gains notoriety with Pu
(1977), later reissued as Violación en Polanco (1980). As Delia Galván notes, the majority of the author‟s
cityspace is mapped out across the northern and eastern sectors of the city center of Mexico City, where the
greatest concentrations of the urban proletariat reside. The exploration of the citified space, however, takes on
an organic tone in Pu as the author questions ideas of race, identity, and sexuality. Ramírez pulls no punches in
his usage of the city as a stage of injustice and violence, leading Vicente Francisco Torres to plainly state: “por
primera vez en la literatura mexicana, los jodidos se expresaban como jodidos” (50). The novel narrates the
raping and subsequent murder of an upper-class Caucasian woman by three Mexican men who are shown to
identify with their indigenous background. They kidnap, rape, and brutally beat the woman in a sacrificial rite
that attempts a purging of the injustices perpetuated against the indigenous peoples by an enemy that Carol
Clark D‟Lugo calls “a composite from the past (the invading Spaniards), the immediate present (the upper
classes that prefer to not see the pitiful circumstances of the indigenous poor), and the post-revolutionary
institutions (any of the successive Mexican governments of the years leading up to the novel‟s publication)”
(53).
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inquires “¿para qué diablos traes un paraguas en un día tan soleado? ¿O es una lanza para
arremeter dragones ahora que te has armado…caballero?” (22). Aside from hinting at a
literary model for Antonia‟s interrogative of gender and sexuality, Francisco adds to the
literary mapping of characters within the undefined diegetic Mexico City, as he mentions
how some of their mutual friends and themselves “desaparecimos del mapa” (23), alluding to
a Deleuzian understanding of geography. The character is also conscious of the
socioeconomic changes in Mexican society, as he instructs Antonia: “se supone que el
mundo ha cambiado y que nos permitimos algunas emociones. Pero llorar…eso es de
maricas” (43).
Their meeting allows a narrative entry into the masculine space of the cantina, which
functions as a spatial and literary genderizing trope. The subject when placed within its real
and textual walls is assigned a gender, as either a dama or a caballero. Antonia reflects on
this process as she is now able to drink her beer from the bottle, though “de adulta
acostumbraba dejar a un lado los vasos que le ofrecían de manera automática los meseros”
(24). This observation reflects the changing role of women in Mexican society, a change that
has not been altogether assimilated by the phallocentric entities and attitudes that constitute
it. Antonia‟s observation further highlights the genderizing effect of the cantina, as women
are expected to adhere to a code of behavior that evokes Kirby‟s reading of the postmodern
space. This silent code is again played out when Antonia spies a young couple who sit at a
(public) restaurant to order food. The wife selects the meals for herself and her husband, yet
it is her husband who must perform his role of macho by ordering for the couple, in a public
assertion of his control over the household.
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The cantina also houses Antonia‟s moment of engagement with the problematic
semantic gender codes of the city when she hesitates in entering the bathrooms labeled by
“los símbolos damas/caballeros, como puertas ineludibles del destino” (25). Keeping with
his Quixotic role as mediator, Francisco directs her to the men‟s room, where she, and the
reader, are privileged a view of “una hilera de mingitorios” (25). Clavel‟s narrative halts for a
moment as the author inserts the first of many photographs, prints, illustrations, and footnotes
(and footnotes to her footnotes) that make Cuerpo náufrago a hypertext that is always in
progress, reflecting that gender, as a Butlerian action, and the city as a gendered construct, is
also always in process.
Once inside the public yet private space of the male bathroom, Antonia reflects that
the shape of the urinal evokes “las caderas de una mujer” (27). This realization comes as a
surprise to the protagonist, as the simple act of evaluating the aesthetics of the urinal, an
object that is within the collective consciousness yet reserved for half its population, makes
her feel as though she “transgredía un límite desconocido” (27). This limit is topographic, as
Antonia notes, “siendo mujer no era fácil topárselos en los baños públicos” (31). It is also,
however, semantic, as access to the mapped space of the male public restroom permits a
genderizing of the subject, as the female body is defined by its lack of access or spatial void
vis-à-vis the urinal. This is textualized by Clavel when Malva, a young art student who has a
brief affair with Antonia, observes that “los mingitorios son objetos del mundo íntimo de los
hombres […] diseñado para su uso exclusivo” (88).
The transgression of this limit is combined with a now innate need to unearth the
performativity of her new gender, as she ponders: “¿cómo se construye un disfraz de
hombre?” (27). Parting from a literary paradigm, Antonia attempts an answer through the
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novels of caballería, though she reconsiders, “¿no [era] acaso una forma estereotipada de la
masculinidad?” (29). The textual consciousness of what is masculinity mingles with
Antonia‟s (and Clavel‟s) exploration of the plurality of the urinal, as it too is not simply a
porcelain fixture that facilitates male urination. The urinal is physiologically gendered, and
spatially genderizing, as Antonia realizes when she first makes contact with it. Even in a
male body, she is hesitant to face its porcelain sides and curvaceous walls: “sin entender por
qué, cerró la puerta con seguro y permaneció desarmada frente a aquel objeto que bostezaba
ensimismado en su propia vanidad” (32).
Antonia‟s inherent fear underlines the disconnect between the imagined body and its
physical attributes, as she never fully assimilates into her masculine role, signaling a failure
on the part of the text or the literary as a means of gaining insight into experience. It is as
though Clavel‟s Kafkan character is never fully convinced of her metamorphosis, stopping to
ponder at every turn the cultural and historic construct that is embedded onto the male body
and its curiously hanging appendage. The mapping of the public space, which is to say the
bathroom, gives a clue to this incomplete assimilation, as it is during her first confrontation
with the urinal does Antonia reveal an intrinsic inability to be within the spatial limits of its
tiled domain: “se percató del intenso olor que emanaba de las paredes interiores. Una
marejada acre y corrosiva, pero también dulzona, que le hizo perder el aliento” (32). Though
spatially planted within the masculine, Clavel‟s protagonist falters in assuming her body-text
as the space is not simply visual. It is the smell of urine left in and around the urinal that
triggers an awareness of her ontological non-congruence with her physical form and the
inability of the space as a textually constructed medium to capture or constrict her identity. It
is as though Clavel‟s protagonist channels the anxieties and inadecuacies of men who stand
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in front of the urinal every day, measuring up to and performing a role inscribed onto their
bodies by the Masculine space.
The relationship between space and Antonia‟s personal identity is concretized when
she visits an all-male sauna with Carlos, a pilot who comes to her acquaintance through
Francisco. Like the men‟s bathroom, the sauna is a genderizing space where its spatial
boundaries attempt a definition of the plotted subject. The naked male bodies cause a crisis in
Antonia, as she relates, “nunca como ahora había experimentado la sensación opresiva de ser
tránsfuga sobre todo por el temor a que una mirada suya, un gesto inapropiado, la hicieran
parecer sospechosa a los ojos de otros” (63). The sauna is also a performative space, a theater
of masculinity, where “unos y otros fingían una indiferencia que nada tenía que ver con sus
impulsos” (65). These impulses, Antonia explains, are rooted in the adoration of the penis, as
the physical phallus is epistemologically essential in a gender-inscribed topography. She
observes that “los hombres siempre estaban viéndose el sexo propio y el de los otros en una
perpetua comparación y competencia” (65). Following the equivalencies of theatricality and
costuming that Clavel establishes, the penis is the metonymic sword of the caballero
andante, as Antonia “estaba desnudo pero sintió el peso de la armadura que más que
protegerlo la aprisionaba” (66).
The writing of the penis circumscribes a greater imaginary of the role of performance
and the male body within the cultural construct of masculinity. This textual exploration
coalesces with Clavel‟s foray into the urinal-space, as Antonia interpolates the physicality of
the male body in coitus with the act of urination, thereby extrapolating the behavioral
functions of the mapped out urinal-space outside its boundaries. In her first relationship with
Malva after the metamorphosis, Antonia imagines the female anatomy as a carnal urinal,
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“como una enorme boca abierta, una gruta insondable” (68). The connection between the
female form and coitus, however, is not only an imagination of the erect phallus, as Malva
emphasizes the ontological referent of the urinal when she places herself within it during an
impromptu photo-session that Antonia incites, where the former realizes that the urinal looks
like a woman. Malva admits that they are physically disturbing and uncanny, suggesting a
Freudian disjunct that adds to the genderizing effect of the space. She, however, is a
traditional Mexican woman who believes that men should be jealous and violent, and silently
assumes the phallogocentrism of the bathroom-text. Antonia contemplates “el cuerpo
desnudo de Malva recargada en un urinario, como un capullo dentor de otro capullo. Se
sintió gravitar en dirección de ese doble gineco que también temblaba de deseo. Apartó los
pétalos y se perdió en él” (91). This encounter is preceded by Antonia privately commenting
that the mingitorio evokes a vagina that elicits desire “en un ritual inconsciente de descarga
que emulaba una copula en el sentido más inmediato y animal” (50). This descriptive point
becomes the fulcrum to Clavel‟s theorizations on masculinity and gender as she instills in the
urinal‟s porcelain walls a reading of gender that subjugated the feminine to the masculine.
Though her analysis at first glance seems over-arching, the plethora of photographic and
narrative “evidence” aesthetically supports the claim that the urinal is an anthropomorphic
female orifice that publicly receives the male. Its curves and sinews, juxtaposed with graphic
anatomical depictions of female genitalia, add a pseudoscientific air to Cuerpo náufrago.
The correspondence between physical penetration and the shape of the urinal directly
implicates the mapped space of the public though private bathroom within a larger social
consciousness of the Masculine. Even Carlos, a pilot who regularly travels outside of Mexico
City, which is to say away from the phallic center, comments that “los mingitorios son como
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las mujeres, los usas y ya” (36). Within the topography of the public space, the urinal is an
inert, always available, and bound metonymization of the female, as Antonia observes that
“en cada uno de ellos, la sensación de poderío al verterse, una descarga que la hacía creer que
el mundo estaba dispuesto y acondicionado para sus necesidades” (33). The urinal as a
structure, therefore, is anatomically gendered (as woman), yet at the same time spatially
genderizing. The latter is a twofold process, given that first it spatially delineates the
boundaries that exclude women, and that later functions as a locus of masculinity, as a body
that both captures phallocentric power through its patrons and perpetuates its adoration of the
penis outside its walls through the exclusivity gained through the act of public desecration of
the feminine form. It is telling that Clavel paints an organic, non-textual body above the
arterial metro, as the urinal is para-textual in its definition of power. It is, according to
Clavel, not limited to the city-text in its ability to genderize paradigms.
The recurrence to the bathroom as an entity that defies the comprehensive control of
the city-text reflects on Deleuze and Guattari‟s understanding of social space, which is to say
the city, as a self-organizing system that resists a state of flux in favor of a congealed or
stratified actuality. As Mark Bonta and John Protevi note, “spaces are NOT constructed by
discourse alone, and thus are not configured solely to be read” (40). The bathroom and public
centers of masculinity such as the sauna, therefore, become non-discursive spaces that do in a
very tangible way impact the mapped and non-mapped spaces of Mexico City.
The power it captures and imbues in its patrons emanates from the blueprinted
boundaries of the restroom to society as an imagined and un-written, unit. Clavel hints at this
process as she describes several bars in Mexico where the urinal leaves the closed space of
the bathroom and becomes a public fixture in the cantina, thereby genderizing this space as
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an all-male stronghold, though this as a process is suggested by the waiters who
automatically provide glasses for female patrons to consume their beers. It is as though the
bottle is too genderized, anthropomorphic of the penis, as only a woman of ill repute would
put her mouth to its phallic opening and drink in public. It is decidedly not feminine to
metaphorically and publicly evoke fellatio among women. Unsurprisingly, this behavior is
discouraged in a society where female honor is valued, though there are no problems with the
orgiastic act of a male copulating with a urinal in public view.109 The genderized tiled space
that is semantically coded by the signifier caballero contaminates the surrounding space with
a phallocentrism that is rooted in its own corporeal anatomy. The female form of the urinal
and the subsequent and repetitive penetration/copulation of it emphasizes patriarchal and
phallogocentric codes and behaviors.
This practice extends to the domestic space, as the misogynistic Carlos comments on
the shape and use of the bidet, which is only anatomically present within the confines of the
residential bathroom. He points out that its presence is not very common in Mexico, as he
defines the bidet as “esos extraños objetos de porcelana donde las mujeres se lavan sus
intimidades antes o después de hacer el amor” (40). Though it is ontologically feminine, the
bidet‟s function is phallocentrically circumscribed by the notion that its usage is contingent
upon sexual relations with a man, which is reminiscent of the public act of urinating into the
urinal.110 The bidet, furthermore, is spatially located in a private space where a woman
metaphorically drinking from a bottle is not frowned upon, in opposition to the urinals that
109
I make reference to one of the bars that Clavel describes where men openly relieve their bladders amongst
other patrons imbibing beers.
110
Though Carlos does not make direct reference to the gender of the woman‟s lover, it can be extrapolated
from his opinions, behavior, and general machista stance that he fosters a heteronormative conception of female
sexual relations that exclude lesbian and non-reproductive sexual practices.
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“nunca aparecen en las casas ni en el dominio de la vida privada. Como si hubiera que
sustraer a esa mirada otra, siempre vigilante, de las mujeres, un universo de intimidad
instintiva, territorialmente masculino” (103-104).
From the textual process of attempting a writing of the bathroom as a center of power,
and the subsequent virtual mapping of the city-space from the subterranean arterial
trajectories of the metro, Clavel explicates the power of the phallus through the ubiquitous
urinal, arguing that men possess “esa naturaleza que quisieran dominar y tener en un punto,
estaba no solo en la cama o en los genitales...Pero pensar así, con esa carga erótica latente
evidenciada y asomando por todas partes” (52). The osmotic effect of power is textually
unexplored, save for when Antonia uses the bathroom in a café near the ministry of foreign
affairs. The café, from its proximity to the city‟s connection to the outside world, where in
cities like Paris and London women can urinate in urinals and bathrooms are increasingly
unisex, evidences a subtle shift in the phallogocentrism that defines the rest of the city-nontext. Instead of a plaque reading “damas/caballeros,” the doors read “Capuccino/Espresso”
(179). Antonia‟s confusion in facing this new semantic code of gender is compounded by the
lack of urinals in either space. The codes that genderize are presented in a subtle reference:
“los baños sugerían juguetonamente una gradación apenas, un matiz en la cantidad de café”
(180). Clavel suggests that even in this space that is spatially linked to the cosmopolitan
centers of the West, the Mexican bathroom is never fully relieved of the grasps of
phallogocentrism that seemingly defines the gendered-body by the coffee it drinks. This is
playfully mocked in the character of the barista who pronounces these imported words as “un
capuchino, un expreso” (181). In a textual stroke that reveals the cartographic difference
between the mapped spaces of Mexico City and its European cousins Paris and London,
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Antonia orders a decidedly local drink, the cortado, instead of the genderized Italian
beverages.111
This play on identity vis-à-vis space is brought to fruition by the description and
photograph of a urinal that bears the following graffiti above its labial porcelain: “todos
somos chingones” (100). The urinal is juxtaposed to Antonia‟s musings on the essence of
masculinity, as she suggests that women envy the male ability to forget, “ese instinto nómada
para orinar, subirse la bragueta, abandonar y seguir su camino mientras una se queda ahí,
reconcentrada, atada a la memoria, incubando resentimientos, hijos, esperas” (105). The
product of the male ability to forget is reminiscent of Paz‟s thesis of Mexico and Mexicans as
the sons of La Malinche, or as he eloquently puts it, as the sons of “La chingada” in his
quintessential El laberinto de la soledad (1950). The graffiti artist agrees with Paz, and
Clavel seems to take a similar stance by defining the effects of the chingón as an overarching
complex created by Mexican, homosocial and hegemonic masculinity. This inclusive
statement reflects upon the text‟s initial hesitance to map out the city and is paradoxically put
to rest, as through the bathroom-space Clavel manages to map-out Mexico City vis-à-vis a
phallocentrism that defines the communal, masculine bathroom.
The bathroom space in Cuerpo náufrago establishes cartographic centers that define
the power held by the masculine homosocial that frequents the mingitorio. The referent of
center inadvertently creates a dialectic periphery that is rooted in its non-compliance with the
tenets of power that emanate from the city. Antonia, as we know, is hesitant in conforming to
111
Just as Mexico City is only mapped out by the phallogocentrism of the bathroom, Clavel undertakes a similar
practice of creating a city through a non-text in the case of Paris and London. The reader is cajoled into taking
an inferential walk through their undescribed streets, creating a city that is imagined through the powerdynamics of the urinal. This exercise is suggestively more than literary, given the inclusion of photographs in
the novel, asserting a reading of the city that is beyond the writing of its space. The inclusion of the cortado is
further relevant in that it represents an intermediate point between milk and coffee: it is by nature a mixture that
defies black/white categorizations.
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the expected performance of her new gender as she questions the literary and real armor and
sword that she is culturally forced to wear. In the men‟s room she evidences a primal sign of
difference when the overpowering smell of the urinal forces her to leave the bathroom, which
is to say the center of phallic power. This separation is furthermore linguistic, as the
protagonist explicitly sections off her penis from her idea of self, explaining: “ella – Antonia
– y él – su falo” (53). She does not partake in Carlos‟s theorization of masculinity that takes
the penis as an ontological base: “para nosotros los hombres [...] el que nuestro sexo sea
exterior, es una confirmación fundamental, por eso verlo, tocarlo, mostrarlo son actos
necesarios y hasta inconscientes” (71).
Antonia‟s inability to associate with this archetypal model of chingón/phallus draws
attention to her relationship with Raimundo, a photographer and friend of Carlos and
Francisco, who is fascinated with the liminal world of shadows as an alternative space to
reality, and who seems to embody a literary reincarnation of the Peter Nagy character from
Los deseos y su sombra. Though at first he joins Carlos and Francisco for beers and revelry,
the reader slowly unearths his ontological separation from the homosocial. This is predicated
by the fascination for urinals that he shares with Antonia, which Francisco explains as simple
“fantasías de las mujeres” (157). Raimundo is equally disqualifying when he states that men
do not exist, and are only “la fantasía del deseo de las mujeres” (87), a belief that extricates
his body from the ideological championing of the phallus by Carlos, and from the city as a
center of masculine power. Raimundo leaves behind his apartment and friends as he falls in
love with a woman on an island away from the city and away from Mexico. The islands
therefore are textually mapped out in a syllogism that is operative under the binary
city/periphery, where the non-masculine is banished to the queered space of the ocean.
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Raimundo‟s movement from the city to the periphery, though highlighted by his
belief in another plane of materialization is associated with a decentering masculinity that
deviates from Carlos‟s fixation on the penis as a penetrating weapon. The disassociation
between penis and self is similarly followed in Antonia, who engages in homosexual coitus
with Raimundo. Their affair, however, is foreshadowed by the metaphorical plotting of
Antonia as a subject within the shapeless space of the ocean. This replotting of the subject is
brought about by the textual trigger of the mingitauro, a covered urinal in what is now a
women‟s bathroom. Antonia suspects that the space was recently remodeled, with a male
plumber choosing to cover the urinal with a black bag that is held in place by black tape that
forms the shape of horns above the covered porcelain. It is a queered urinal, with feminine
shapes and masculine horns, and though it is covered, its absence emphasizes its presence, as
even in the public female space we are reminded of the phallogocentrism that emanates from
a door away. The discovery of the mingitauro forces a psychological break in Antonia as she
abandons her quixotic mission of unearthing the essence of masculinity that is based on
performance.
The first step in this abandonment is described in a nightclub where Antonia, Carlos,
Francisco and Raimundo engage in the services of a stripper/prostitute in a private room. In a
space that is traditionally reserved for men to hacerse hombres, Clavel writes through an
aesthetics of inebriation as she expresses Antonia‟s fragile identification with the gender
assigned to her physiological anatomy. The prostibule becomes a place where Antonia does
not hacerse hombre and conversely begins a decentering process in regards to her sexual
identity; the ocean effectively becomes a gestured space of hacerse queer. The narrative
delves into aquatic metaphors as the drunk Antonia begins to feel herself slip into the blue
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depths of the ocean, away from the city and away from the theatricality of gender, as Carlos
and Francisco indulge in the body of the prostitute. Raimundo, however, silently observes the
orgy and does not participate as Antonia slips into unconsciousness. It is here that she
remembers kissing someone, though the text is unclear, imprecise, and throbbing in its
alcoholic amnesia.
The spatial displacement from the prostibule into the ocean is textually illustrated by
the biology of migratory eels that are sexually undifferentiated when young, but change as
adults according to the “dictados del medio ambiente: condiciones de salinidad, índices de la
tabla periódica de la pasión” (114). From this biological metaphor, Clavel suggests that
human bodies are too cultured and differentiated by similar environmental factors, though
ours tend to be historical and cultural internal processes of gender formation and not
necessarily public performances and iterations. Clavel further identifies the migration of eels
as being intrinsic to their sexual differentiation, emphasizing how they are able to travel great
distances without any navigational referents. This performativity of sexuation is mimicked by
Antonia as she approaches Raimundo‟s apartment. Though initially holding onto the walls of
his building to guide her, she lets go and drifts like an eel towards a genetic moment that will
define her sexuality. The use of the life history of eels in combination with Antonia‟s
slippage into the waters of inebriation depict the underlying shift in the telos of her identity
as she engages in carnal relations with Raimundo where both are penetrated and penetrating.
Antonia describes male homosexual sex as always violent, like “un salto al oceano” (119),
underscoring the cartographic shift from city to non-city that defines queerness in Cuerpo
náufrago.
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This shift, however, is never fully complete as Clavel resists a complete inversion of
the heterosexual, masculine caballero model that up until this point defines Antonia‟s
gender. Her description of penetrating Raimundo is resplendent with chivalric imagery,
indicating that social phallogocentrism is a difficult devil to shirk: “reconoció que nunca
antes había sentido poder semejante: una plenitud victoriosa, el resplandor de una espada
para someter y degollar al otro” (124). It is as though those repeated actions of urinating in
the urinal, an iterative performance of the Masculine, have conditioned Antonia to think with
and through the phallus. The penetrative act in Antonia is not rooted in an ontological
discourse of queerness that is diametrically opposed to heteronormative sexuality, but is
rather a position that is founded on a refusal to adhere to any subject-sexual position, as
Antonia notes, “a pesar de los tiempos que corren el cuerpo soy-mujer sigue siendo un
vestido con corsé, lo mismo que el cuerpo soy-hombre es una armadura. Nos preocupamos y
ocupamos de las diferencias (incluso en el cuerpo soy-gay)” (164). Clavel‟s protagonist
deceives these theatrical roles as she falls in love with Paula, a researcher who studies
biodiversity in the Grecian isles. Returning to the biological metaphor of the migratory eels,
Clavel‟s description of Antonia falling in love is highlighted by an internal “torrente de
anguilas tornasoleando vibrátiles” that emphasize her shift away from the cartographic city.
Antonia‟s identity as based on her sexuality is seemingly returned to the
heteronormative model of male-body with penis showing desire for a female, as Paula is first
described as “ella – porque no cabía duda sobre su sexo” (127). This description, however, is
ambiguated when Paula is described to have a female penis. Clavel carefully evades an
anatomic description of Paula‟s genitalia, suggesting that the narrative is now too dislodged
from the tangents of power that emanate from the Masculine mingitorio, as Paula is
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described to have a bulge in between her legs that is sexually reactive and sovereign, though
it is never specified as the metamorphic appendage that befuddles Antonia the morning of her
transformation.
The process of sexual transmutation in Cuerpo náufrago comes full circle as Antonia,
described as “él o ella – porque cabía la duda sobre su género” (181) arrives at the Aeolian
isles as a Deleuzoguattarian body without organs (159). Antonia becomes an “organism
moved from „equilibrium,‟ that is, out of a stable state or „comfort zone‟ […], to an intensive
crisis realm (producing changeable, „metastable‟ habits)” (Bonta and Protevi 63). She is
liberated from the obsession with chivalric performativity and the physiology and
physiognomy of the urinals that populate the many public spaces of Mexico City. This last
point is noted as she mentally leaves behind her former life, “como quien da un salto en el
vacío o se arroja al mar abierto” (182). Her final act of sexual ambiguation, as an antonymic
function of differentiation brought about by society and culture, is founded on the
cartographic placement of the body within the indefinite and ambiguous coordinates of the
ocean. The ocean, we must remember, resists the Cartesian physics of two-dimensional
textual city-mapping as it introduces a third axis of movement that is rendered impotent in
the imagined city. By launching Antonia into this non-space, Clavel‟s character escapes the
power matrices of Mexico City.
Focusing on a poetics of the city, Cuerpo náufrago is minimalist in its naming of
delineating the spaces and alleyways of the megalopolis. This, however, does not render
Clavel‟s text impotent in defining the connection between city and self. Through the arterial
channels of the metro lines, the city becomes an organic body that defies textual
representation and the paradoxical non-representation that it implies. Space for Clavel is
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more intimately connected to a theoretical questioning of how the city defines gender, as
Antonia‟s spatial exodus from Mexico City to the Grecian isles, combined with her theatric
exodus from the performance of heteronormative masculine gender roles, accentuate the
centrality of the city as a spatialization of phallo and phallogocentrism that is captured in the
gendered and genderizing kingdom of the mingitorio.
The Failure of Space and the Destabilization of Masculinities
The narrative trajectory of gender across a larger canvas of mapped-out and virtual
space in Ana Clavel‟s two novels signals a failure to capture the gendered-subject within a
matrix of masculinity along the reterritorialized axes of Latin America. The city as an
ontological and epistemological referent evaporates as an obsolete construct that is unable to
articulate a sustained inquiry into the possibility of dephallicizing contemporary Latin
American culture. In the psychological and existential travails of Soledad in Los deseos y su
sombra, the city as a textual space is left impotent as her body and self are lost and cannot be
spatially plotted in relation to the Castillo, Palacio or boulevard de héroes. Clavel‟s authorial
challenge to Masculinity is left mute and unseen, much like the vagabonds and transients that
populate and mechanize her discursive urban-space-text. The writer‟s concern with
dethroning the phallus and its metonymization in the hegemonic is remapped onto a virtual
space that gestures towards Mexico City without necessarily naming it. This alternative
process, following a Deleuzoguattarian cartographic praxis, potentiates a second challenge to
the power of masculinity over the subaltern and non-heteronormative through an exploration
and articulation of the bathroom as a genderized and genderizing space. Through a structured
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methodology of minor science as a tool of understanding the internal tensions and forces of
the city, Clavel‟s Cuerpo náufrago reorganizes space along the rhizomatic modeling of the
centers of capture of hegemonic masculinity. The metamorphic protagonist, Antonia, and the
textual author, Clavel, engage in an attack on the masculine as an enabling and defining
constituent of the greater social and spatial milieu of Mexico City. But does the recurrence to
a virtual space succeed in reterritorializing Latin American conceptions of gender vis-à-vis
space? The final exodus away from the city and the deindividuation of the gendered subject
suggest otherwise.
Leaving Mexico City behind, Clavel‟s Las violetas son flores del deseo (2007)
reassumes the author‟s interrogation of desire but focuses on the paternal temptations of
pedophilia, channeled through the creation and marketing of life-sized prepubescent dolls
named after the protagonist‟s daughter Violeta. The androgyne figure of Cuerpo náufrago is
catalyzed into an asexuated doll, “la Desnombrada” (99), that complicates the protagonist‟s
sexuality. He is confronted by a secret society that fights pedophiles and is almost killed, but
the narrative takes a surprising twist as the now-adult Violeta returns to her father‟s side. By
clouding the lines between pederasty and desire, Clavel forces the reader to reflect on the
basis of our own desires. Her novelistic exercise is, however, disjointed from the urban
space, and instead takes place in a vaguely European city.
Though the era of a literary and political civilización and barbarie has led into an
understanding of the urban as being all-encompassing, space as represented by the city is
delegitimized as ontological to the subject and its personal markers of identity. The
disempowerment of space coincides with the onset of a (more) democratic and mobile
society that has been forced to adapt under the economic forces of neoliberal globalization
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that José Emilio Pacheco first signals in Las batallas en el desierto. With the resultant
internal and thermogenetic processes of instability and reorganization, Latin American
society looks towards a new articulation of gender that allows for a reimagining of the
national as another cog in an increasingly deterritorialized global. The writing of space in
Clavel, following a longer line of authors who pen the urban, underscores the ubiquity and
unanimity of hegemonic masculinity as an organizational point and process that cannot be
easily usurped, even through the cartographic and theoretical tools of the virtual and the
rhizome.
Subsequently we are left with a series of questions that indicate a crisis of spatiality
that operates as a sub-plateau to overriding crises in masculinity and identity as the processes
of hybridization and transculturation obfuscate an imaginary that is indigenous,
understanding, and encompassing of Latin America. I point once more to Raewyn Connell‟s
theorization of a global order of hegemonic masculinity that spreads its tentacles through
multinational business conglomerates, as a challenge to an idea of Latin American
masculinity that resists a deterritorialization and commercialization of the body and self. The
failure of space in Clavel is emblematic of a similar failure in territorial masculinities in the
works of Bayly, Fuguet and Belli who insist on a deterritorialized or non-specific praxis of
space to discursivize masculinities and genders.
But not all is lost. Though the idea of a national Masculine order or a particular
aesthetics of virility may be dead as we push forward into the 21st century, new models and
approximations to masculinities are appearing in contemporary Latin American fiction.
These tropes and characters evidence a shift away from a naturalist or romantic writings of
self, as they suggest an indigenous, culturally-sensitive understanding of masculinities,
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phallocentrism, and phallogocentrism that subtly defect from unifying globalized
representations of gender. In the next chapter I put forward a series of reconceptions of
masculinity and the male form that arise from contemporary societies‟ interactions with
transnational economic and technocratic forces of change.
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CHAPTER 5
HARD DRIVES, CYBORGS, AND VIAGRA: NEW CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF
MASCULINITIES AND THE BODY
You’re wondering who I am – machine or mannequin
With parts made in Japan, I am the modern man.
Styx, “Mr. Roboto.”
In this chapter I look at current trends in the writing of masculinities, focusing
specifically on works that question the corporeality and position of masculinity vis-à-vis
Latin America. Building on the failure of space to serve as a topological referent to a
challenge of gender phallocentrism in contemporary fiction, I invite the reader to embark on
a literary journey that illuminates a textual practice of gender that is questioning and
unwilling to accept canonical norms of representation. Just as Jesús Montoya Juárez and
Ángel Esteban observe in Entre lo local y lo global: la narrativa latinoamericana en el
cambio de siglo (1990-2006) (2008), Latin American fiction is increasingly pushing the
geospatial boundaries that we know. Works by authors such Mario Bellatin, Edmundo Paz
Soldán, Iván Thays, Santiago Gamboa, Roberto Bolaño and Enrique Serna write the Latin
American condition into esoteric references such as Japan, New England, Paris and
Barcelona. I am interested in these fictions that stretch conceptions of Latin Americanness,
which in turn suggests an inevitable stretching of the cultural ideologies of gender that are
so-often attributed to sociocultural systems.
Within the study of Latin American gender studies, the last decade has seen a boom
in certain topics and ideologies. On the one hand, we have the rise of an increasingly eco-
aware criticism that builds on critical work done in the North American academy in the
1990s. Critics such as Marisa Pereyra, Laura Barbas Rhoden, and Alicia Rivero have been
instrumental in creating a critical consciousness of the relationship between nature, humanity
and the dynamics of power that are characteristic of patriarchal Latin American societies.
Other relevant fields of criticism include the branch of ideas, articles, and books that surge
from Donna Haraways‟s influential thesis on the cyborg body and feminism. An initial
incursion by Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman in their anthology, Latin American Cyberculture
and Cyberliterature (2007), questions the fusion of body and machine in Latin American
literature and culture but this line of investigation is nascent and ripe for further study.
On the other hand, there has been a surge in inquiry related to the effects on and
representations of gender in popular culture such as comics. Critics such as Bruce Campbell
and David William Foster have undertaken a reading of the impact of comic book culture in
Latin America following Ariel Dorfman‟s influential The Empire’s Old Clothes: What the
Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes do to our Minds (1983). These critiques
question the impact of both US influence over the economic industries of culture in the South
and the resultant ideals and tropes that this brand of imperialism deploys via mass media.
Keeping in mind this notion of influence and/or causality, critics and authors have reflected
on the validity and viability of including Latin American gender studies within debates
raging in the North, as writers and thinkers note the emphasis placed on the body over
performance, on the blurred spaces of identity that escape categorizations that are popularly
and casually thrown around in North American schools of thought. With that being said,
however, the points of cultural contact, assimilation, and hybridity cannot be ignored, even if
a local, independent notion of gender is to be cultivated.
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In this chapter I build on the postulates, theorems, and analyses put forth in earlier
pages as I examine three distinct works from a spectrum of male writers, produced in the past
decade. I am not so much interested in a textual analysis of each work per se, but instead
arrange these texts in a tableau that inculcates broader categorizations and extrapolations that
stretch the boundaries of gender and Latin American fiction. That being said, I am not
suggesting that each work be included in a canonical array of the state of masculinity in Latin
America today. Instead, I propose that each text, in its own right, provides a juicy caveat into
what to expect from an increasing corpus of writers who are more and more preoccupied and
reactive to the state of masculinity and men.
The ontological disappearance of space that I examine in the previous chapter is
rolled over into my study of Hernán Rodríguez Matte‟s only novel Barrio Alto (2004). The
text follows in a series by others such as Alberto Fuguet (Mala onda, 1991; Por favor,
rebobinar, 1998), Jaime Bayly (No se lo digas a nadie, 1994; La mujer de mi hermano,
2002) and Xavier Velasco (Diablo guardián, 2003) that portray youth enslaved by
consumerism. Though originally included in Alberto Fuguet‟s ambitious Cuentos con
Walkman (1993), Rodríguez Matte develops a relatively recluse literary career that is
punctuated by short stories and regular essays in journals and newspapers. Akin to his
countryman Fuguet, Rodríguez Matte‟s forays into the world of cinema and art-house shorts
has garnered more attention that his novel. In what can be considered a fast-forward of Mala
onda (1991), Rodríguez Matte highlights questions of class, globalization, and ennui in
contemporary Santiago. But what differentiates this piece from Fuguet‟s generationallydefining work are the seeds and referents to the protagonist‟s existential crisis. In my analysis
of Barrio Alto, I call attention to the disarticulation of space vis-à-vis hegemonic masculinity
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in an increasingly agglomerative urban space. This, in turn, is combined with the use of
North American comic book superheroes as cultural axes that structure the performance of
masculinity in upper-class Chile.
Just as the new historical novels in Chapter 1 paid particular attention to the anatomy
of the male body, Rodríguez Matte focuses on the fragmentation of the protagonist‟s body
into different discursive and epistemological sites that are related through the language of
computer science. The hinted cyborg body in Barrio Alto is developed in Santiago
Roncagliolo‟s Tan cerca de la vida (2010), where the Peruvian journalist/author meshes
science fiction with romance into a 21st-century foundational myth for a globalized and
technocratic society. In my study I highlight the writing of the male body through Donna
Haraway‟s vision, touching base with feminist criticism on the female cyborg and the
potential ramifications of writing a Latin American male cyborg that challenges
multinational masculinity.
The final novel I examine deviates from a focus on cybernetic and ecocritical thought
in the theorization of contemporary masculinity. I study, instead, Enrique Serna‟s La sangre
erguida (2010) as a text that puts forth a separate incursion into an inquiry of Latin American
masculinity. The Mexican novelist, essayist, and screenwriter is well-known for his historical
novels, but chooses to focus on questions of masculine development and sexuality in his
latest work. I examine some of the questions he plants in essays regarding the crisis in Latin
American masculinity and suggest an exit strategy to the problematic of the Latin phallus that
Ilan Stavans eloquently describes. Looking at issues of bisexuality and impotency, I argue
that Serna‟s take on the phallus is reflective of a need to rearrange the role of the Latin
phallus within society.
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The end-game of these pages is two-fold. First, I suggest current and (possibly) future
trends in the conceptualization of masculinity in contemporary Latin American fiction. The
scope of these pages, however, leaves out other trends that can be seen in the fiction of
writers such as Alfredo Sepúlveda and Jaime Bayly who metonymize the concerns of an
emasculated demographic into the figure of the cojo. Bayly‟s El cojo y el loco (2009) is
particularly illuminative as his allegorical style portrays a male body that is subjugated to the
ire and power of North American, oligarchic, and hegemonic masculinities. We can see a
similar pessimism vis-à-vis masculine gender in Sepúlveda‟s Las muchachas secretas
(2004), where the paraplegic protagonist must flee the detritus and despair in his middle-class
neighborhood, and can only attain success abroad. Both works coin an alternative politics of
masculinity in Latin America that is castrated by the effects of neoliberalism.
The figure of the cojo is reactive to Connell‟s theorized multinational masculinity, but
shows no signs of resisting or positing a tangible and viable alternative to foreign hegemony,
which elicits the second aim of my analysis. Following in the footsteps of the work of Mara
Viveros Vigoya, José Olavarría, and José Alfonso-Toro amongst others, I study the literary
dialogue between culturally indigenous representations of masculinity and multinational
hegemony, which permits a line of flight away from the “crisis” that is repeatedly invoked. I
suggest that the crisis in masculinity has changed from the initial skirmishes between
machismo and emancipated women to a continent-wide struggle between subjugated national
masculinities and hegemonic, heterogenous multinationalism, reaffirming Ignacio Sánchez
Prado‟s call to recognize “la región como interlocutora legítima en los debates culturales a
escala mundial” (30).
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Natural, Comic, and Existential Masculinity in Barrio Alto
I’ve got a secret I’ve been hiding under my skin
My heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBM
So if you see me acting strangely, don’t be surprised
I’m just a man who needed someone, and somewhere to hide.
Styx, “Mr. Roboto.”
The spreading of Connell‟s latest brand of theorized masculinity has been studied by
economists and anthropologists who have described the dynamics of neoliberalization in
Latin America. Though the tangible realities of these changes have been analyzed, the
literary representations of these changes are a work in progress as an increasing number of
hybridized, globalized, and kitsch fictions come off the presses. What needs to be seen,
however, is how this globalized masculinity has been portrayed in fiction and what measures
are taken to affront and/or question its authority over the landscape. In the following pages I
will bring up questions and answers to the portrayal of what Connell calls transnational
business masculinity in Latin America, paying careful attention to how these male bodies are
represented and how alternative avatars of masculinity are created and substantiated in
fiction.
The processes of neoliberalism, aside from changing wealth and class demographics
and social conditions is also responsible for the decentering of the traditional military and
political homosocial that characterized the center of Latin American societies. From a literary
standpoint, novels such as Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar and Bryce Echenique‟s El
huerto de mi amada are effective representations of the power held by small, homosocial
groups of men that controlled the destiny of Latin America since its inception into the
politics of the nation. But what happens to these groups when bigger honchos from abroad
invade their stranglehold over domestic channels of power?
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The capitalist project of urban diversification and sprawl can be noted in Hernán
Rodríguez Matte‟s Barrio Alto, a 2004 reincarnation of Mala onda that shares similar
ideologies and stylistics. Like Fuguet‟s novel, Rodríguez Matte frames his text around a popculture epigraph that embodies the cultural and existential ennui faced by the first-person
narrator. Adhering to an aesthetics of cocaine and alcohol, the narrative shows the same
disdain for all-things Chilean that Fuguet‟s protagonist, Matías Vicuña, embodies when he
identifies himself as “un pendejo de un país que nadie conoce y que a nadie interesa. Un país
que se cree lo mejor, como yo aquí” (Mala onda 14). Furthermore, the protagonist in Barrio
Alto, Benjamín Ossa, follows the self-centered worldview of his predecessor. On a final note,
the similarities between Barrio Alto and Mala onda are structural, as the former‟s chapters
are also positioned around specific dates, though it is decidedly apolitical, unlike Fuguet‟s
direct reference to Pinochet‟s plebiscite. Rodríguez Matte‟s novel is, however, placed in
1999, which holds economic and/or modernist implications as the author questions if and
how things will change as Chile enters the new millennium. The title refers to the Northeast
and eastern regions of Providencia, Las Condes and Vitacura that become the cordoned off
locales of the rich and powerful in the 1980s.
Just as the novel can be traced as a literary evolution of Mala onda, it also channels
the economic and social changes that are brought about by agglomeration economies and the
archipelagation of the cityspace. We must remember that Santiago is unlike other Latin
American megacities in that it is only now following growth patterns parallel to Mexico
City‟s “feral” development. As a result, Santiago‟s older neighborhoods of wealth have lost
their traditional role in the lives of the rich as the new upper class is content with setting up
shop in varying spaces in and around the city. The city is moving towards the North
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American model of the metropolitan urban center, where several economic nodes are
interconnected by convenient and efficient infrastructure to create an archipelago of urbanity
that decenters the traditional center/periphery model. As the city shatters and fragments
archeological strata and zones of containment, the powers of hegemonic masculinity lose
their spatial hold over the center and the barrio alto and instead take up symbolic positions
and channels of power, as evidenced in my analysis of Clavel‟s Los deseos y su sombra and
Cuerpo náufrago.
The novel is centered on a personal crisis characterized by a non-belonging to a
defined social context that offsets the stability enjoyed by the protagonist as a wealthy youth.
We can first note Benja‟s disdain for the local as understood in regional terms, when he
emphatically affirms that “esos sofisticados grupos les importara un carajo lo que sucede
aquí en Sudamérica, en el culo del mundo” (44). Secondly, the protagonist is critical of a
consumerist culture that Fuguet and others normalize in their narrative. As a university
student majoring in marketing, Benja observes: “más de la mitad del mundo occidentalizado
se había dejado seducir por la idea de comprar sin saber que eso no servirá de nada. La
televisión, los avisos publicitarios, y la idea de acumular nuevas cosas nos estaba rodeando al
punto de dejarnos insensibles y asfixiados” (166).
This realization leads to a crisis in the subject which is necessarily linked to a crisis
vis-à-vis the thirdspace of the barrio alto as a symbol of hegemonic masculinity. As a
wealthy university student, Benja‟s life is defined by mindless consumption that repetivizes
pleasure into a static condition that desensitivizes the urban flaneur, leading him to note:
“Estoy cansado de masturbarme. Estoy cansado de fumar marihuana y de ver televisión.
Estoy cansado de esta casa y de la gente que la habita” (11). The placement of the narrative
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voice within the house is intrinsic to a discourse of discontentment that circumscribes the
novel. Unlike Fuguet‟s protagonist in Mala onda who never quite understands the source of
his crisis, Benja is plainly aware of the negative impact the barrio alto has on his own
existence.
The idea of manliness and belonging to the urban homosocial has further evolved
from the temporal space of Mala onda as the economic power to buy drugs and cigarettes,
and not carnal prowess in the brothel, defines the act of “hacerse hombre” (Barrio Alto 13).
The protagonist is unapologetic in his criticism of neoliberal policies in Chile, which he
contends has defined the nation and its people as a vague simulacrum of the United States.
The confrontation with foreign influences over national identity takes on a cultural angle
when Benja observes:
Podía verme a mí mismo tratando de imitar lo que había aprendido toda mi vida en
los programas de televisión, en las películas, en la ropa y en la música que escuchaba,
en la comida y los artefactos eléctricos, los modismos, los peinados y hasta la manera
de quedarme callado, todo había sido aprendido de algún estúpido actor medio
drogadicto y medio amanerado de Estados Unidos. (67)
Taking as a basis the explicit challenge to US cultural imperialism that was lacking in Mala
onda, Rodríguez Matte engages in an urban mapping that is at first glance analogous to the
car rides and enunciations of the cityspace performed by Matías. The differences arise,
however, in the protagonist‟s ability to move outside the comfort zone of the barrio alto and
into the southern topographies that left Matías Vicuña scared and disoriented, urging him to
return to civilization. After his break from the thirdspace of his neighborhood, Benja finds
himself in a lower-class bar that “podía atemorizar a cualquiera” (116). When approached by
two ruffians, he quickly engages in conversation and gains a certain level of trust and
friendship with „El Manilla‟ and „El Chico Jano.‟ The interchange between the wealthy,
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educated Benja and the two working-class men, who belong in any of Lemebel‟s crónicas or
Tengo miedo torero (2001), is short-lived but powerful in that it establishes a cartography of
self that transgresses the topographic borders of the traditional barrio alto.
The protagonist in Rodríguez Matte‟s novel, however, is able to articulate the source
of crisis vis-à-vis space and subjectivity in turn-of-the-century Santiago as he realizes that the
ideological stronghold of the genderizing barrio alto no longer exists. He suffers from a
cartographic dislocation that leaves him without secondspace referents to root him within the
firstspace, thereby permitting a sense of self within the contemporary thirdspace of Santiago.
Benja stresses that as a wealthy Chilean, “no estoy ni en el centro ni en el exterior. Quizás no
estoy en ninguna parte” (24). The motto of non-belonging, of floating through the cityspace
instead of defining it, is illustrative of the archipelagic and decentralized body of
urbanization that occurs, in part, due to the rise of the town-center model in fin du siècle
Santiago as space loses its tectonic identity.
We are allowed to pause and reflect on this cartographic schism in urban
development when Benja philosophizes that “el barrio alto había dejado de existir” (36).
During one of many drives through the city, he stops to remember “la época en que no había
tanta congestión. Las estrechas calles estaban rodeadas de árboles y se respiraba una
atmósfera campestre” (36). Keeping with his role as an enlightened intellectual observer,
Benja explains that this soon changed, as “una estampida de familias emergieron de quién
sabe dónde para instalarse en sus casitas iguales, comprar en el supermercado y llenar sus
autos de bencina” (36), reflecting on the rise of an urban middle class that has access to
personal transportation. He addresses the construction of the town centers and the resultant
geospatial cephalization of agglomeration economies when he notes that during the
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weekends, these same families “se paseaban por el mall llenos de satisfacción sabiendo que
por fin estaban instalados en el barrio alto, sin saber que el barrio alto ya no estaba ahí” (36).
The novel, however, never explicates the new location of the barrio as the reader and
protagonist are left with a social and spatial void that Rodríguez Matte‟s text exploits as an
existential conundrum that can only be solved by imbibing massive quantities of imported
spirits and snorting high-quality cocaine.
The sense of not-belonging by a gendered body belonging to the hegemonic group
reflects upon the democratization of space away from traditional demarcations of gender, but
the veins of power that emanate from the homosocial are not extinct. The destabilization of
the barrio alto as a thirdspace requires a parallel restructuring of the imagined ideals and
attributes of the space, as the changes described by Benja only reflect a topographic
decentralization of the wealthy and poor in Santiago. The traditional barrio alto is defined by
money, family name, and honor, as Benja explains that his grandmother is most affected by
the topographic shift in Santiago, as she complains that:
Los nuevos ricos no hacían otra cosa que ostentar el poco dinero que tenían. Los
viejos ricos, en cambio, trataban de ocultar su inmensa fortuna ante los demás bajo el
slogan de la austeridad. En cualquiera de los casos, lo que ella realmente no podía
tolerar era la idea de una clase media emergente que le importaban un rábano los
apellidos y las tradiciones de las que ella se jactaba tanto. Los viejos ricos estaban en
extinción, pero ella no quería verlo. (36)
The disintegration of the hegemonic space in Barrio Alto calls to attention the role of the
ruling homosocial of the Club de la Unión, a physical meeting point of political, economic,
and social strains of hegemonic masculinity. This space is metonymized in the figure of
Roberto, an over-achieving friend of the protagonist who comes from a storied line of
politicians and businessmen who own the privatized power company that literally, and
metaphorically, sustains Chile and its projects of growth. The critique of this powerful
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homosocial is carried out through a sustained desubjectification of Roberto, who like others
of his generation is described to have been “tragado por el efecto sedante del sistema
corporativo” (70). Similarly, these men who occupy and define the traditional pockets of
power within the barrio alto are described as “robots esclavizados por la idea de acumular y
ganar más dinero” (70).
The similarities to Connell‟s idea of transnational business masculinity are powerful,
as Rodríguez Matte effectively contrapositions the libertine protagonist to the mindless,
dressed-in-grey-suits male bodies that function as minions of the neoliberal cancer that is
slowly infecting the planet. Rodríguez Matte‟s Benja challenges the traditional cartographies
of control by refusing to be like Roberto and his countless classmates who now dress in
imported suits and drive expensive cars to brain-draining jobs that can only guarantee
economic amassing. His refusal is grounded in the parallel disintegration of the barrio alto as
a result of archipelagic urban growth and the rise of the middle class that dislocate the
traditional referents of money and privilege from the mapped-out spaces of the wealthy.
The textual construction of transnational business masculinity is compounded by its
collocation with traditionally hegemonic masculinities. In a tense moment between a group
of wealthy youths, including Benja, and a patrolling pack of bloodthirsty police offices, the
protagonist observes that they “no hacían otra cosa que deambular como sanguijuelas
buscando una manera de sacarle provecho a su poder. No podía razonar con ellos. Había algo
demasiado equivocado en la gente que usaba uniformes” (155). Benja, furthermore, opines
that the police, military and clergy are all alike, “débiles detrás de los uniformes” (155). He
places the enslaved robots like Roberto within this group, arguing that “los ejecutivos y
políticos vestidos iguales, llevando coléricas corbatas como si fuese la única prenda con la
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que pueden tomarse ciertas libertades. Se esconden detrás de la institución” (155). The
institution in Barrio Alto, however, is not as salient as Benja at first imagines, as it has given
way to transnational businesses that ignore the traditions of the homosocial that were sacred
in Mala onda.
The dematerialization of the local homosocial, which is to say the politicians and
businessman that traditionally controlled the Club de la Unión, results in a reorganized and/or
disorganized cartographic theatre for the subject who cannot help but assert: “no estoy ni en
el centro ni en el exterior. Quizás no estoy en ninguna parte” (24), calling to mind what
Fredric Jameson calls a crisis of boundaries where the borders and categories of space are
blurred. The critic ponders if this postmodern space does “not tend to demobilize us and
surrender us to passivity and helplessness, by systematically obliterating possibilities of
action under the impenetrable fog of historical inevitability?” (86). The conclusion to
Rodríguez Matte‟s Bildungsroman is not afforded the sanctity of the barrio alto as Benja
must instead negotiate a masculine identity that is constructed as a product of transnational
business masculinity and the hegemonic power it holds over developing societies such as
Santiago.
In what follows, the protagonist and his friends get together for a farewell dinner at a
Chinese restaurant in the historic center as Benja arrives in a drunken and coke-induced state
as Roberto is to leave for the United States to continue his studies in law, whereas Javiera,
Benja‟s love interest, is pregnant with Olaf‟s baby. The group melancholically finishes their
meal amidst goodbye speeches but is accosted by a group of urban “pelusones” (191) who
rob the tires from Olaf‟s car. Resembling more a band of animals than urban dwellers, the
low-class invaders of the urban space stab Olaf to death and leave Benja with multiple
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internal wounds. The punctured body of Olaf insinuates the death of traditional hegemonic
masculinity in Santiago, though we know the opposite to be true, as the sons of the old guard
are now cogs in the international homosocial of multinational masculinity.
The realization that the city has changed and that the barrio alto has ceased to exist as
a real and imagined space triggers a survivalist strategy in Benja, as the past is left behind
and “se vislum[bra] una oportunidad para reorganizar [su] vida como un computador que se
reinicia y logra reordenar todos sus archivos desde el principio” (199). By reconfiguring
hierarchies of power amongst masculinities, transnational business masculinity forces a
reevaluation of local masculinities as they assimilate and diverge from pop culture and
technocratic influences. The narrative trajectory of the protagonist in Barrio Alto calls to
question this process of change as Rodríguez Matte pays careful attention to the construction
of the male body and his subjectivity.
The author‟s reimagination of the corporeality of masculinity is garnered through a
dialectic construction of the female in relation to nature, echoing what recent trends in
ecocritical thought have established in the context of Latin American narrative. As a
distinctive school of thought, ecofeminism only gains a following in the 1990s, though its
origins can be traced to earlier works such as Susan Griffin‟s Women and Nature: The
Roaring Inside Her (1978). The aim of ecofeminism is to give inanimate natural objects and
elements a voice, so that we can understand the position of the Other. By giving nature a
voice, we force ourselves into the position of the Other through language, allowing for an
understanding of the effects of phallocentrism and andro-domination over the planet as an
extension of the same in society.
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The problem with ecofeminism, however, lies in its objectives as they are often
obtuse and mythopoetic, seeking to find some long-lost Edenic paradise that holds no real
world value or potentiality. Foundational texts such as Literature, Nature, and Other (1995)
by Patrick Murphy argue that the greatest value of ecofeminism is that it provides a best
approximation of the other because the fights against patriarchy and capitalism must be
placed in a broader context, which is to say in the context of the relationship between
humanity and nature, though the oppression suffered by nature and women is not the same.
Similar comments are made by Alicia Rivero, who affirms that “ecocriticism probes the way
in which literature is related to the environment from an „earth-centered‟ perspective” (5).
More radical thinkers such as the activist and writer Starhawk argue that that the goal of
ecofeminist thought is “not to just change who wields power but to transform the structure of
power itself” (76).
Such vague aims and methodologies are intrinsically problematic and often only
idealistic in their application, but a closer look into ecofeminist thought evidences a recurring
trope in Latin American fiction. Commenting on the state of ecofeminism in Latin America,
Gloria da Cunha-Giabbai notes that the genderizing of the natural occupies a central role in
late 19th-century and early 20th-century fiction. Citing works by Rómulo Gallegos and others,
the critic calls to attention the characterization of the feminine natural as a monstrous
barbarie (53), which is portrayed in opposition to the masculine civilization. She notes,
however, that this trend changes in the mid 20th century with works such as La casa verde
(1966) by Mario Vargas Llosa where “la naturaleza se presenta como el regazo Salvador que
protégé al hombre de la injusticia social” (53).
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The recurrence to the natural as feminine is problematized by Gretchen Legler when
she asserts that “the constructions of nature as female (as mother/virgin) are essential to the
maintenance of […] hierarchical ways of thinking that justify the oppression of the various
„others‟ in patriarchal culture by ranking them „closer to nature‟” (228). This can be applied
to how Ana Clavel portrays female genitalia as a flower that must be perforated and
inseminated in her thesis on the nodes of masculine power in contemporary urban spaces. A
similar narrative strategy is carried out by Rodríguez Matte in Barrio Alto as he struggles to
find tangible referents to his displaced and decentered subject. The protagonist uses nature as
a gendered tool to characterize his own masculinity as he contrasts himself with a love
interest, Amelia, described as “una delicada mariposa entre el pastizal, libre y despreocupada
y yo en cambio me siento como una mosca sucia y oportunista, volando entre el alambrado
de púas y una bosta de caballo” (24).
There is an initial attempt to resemanticize Benja along the lines of the natural but
this fails as the protagonist equates the condition of nature with the power of the
multinationals over Chilean society as they create and feed the mindless disease of
capitalism. Disdainful of the new middle class and the robotic automatons of transnational
business masculinity, Benja realizes that conceiving himself through nature only leaves him
as “otro pájaro sin cerebro” (44). The failure of nature as a referent for the protagonist‟s
nascent masculinity is put down when he affirms that “a veces trato de hablar con mi
naturaleza, pero ella no quiere hablar conmigo” (60). We see a final break from the dialectic
between nature and man when he describes the flooding of a river: “el río y el mar no son
más que un macho y una hembra apareándose. Sólo que esta vez, el macho no está para
sutilezas” (136), reflecting the discord felt between the male subject and its natural metaphor.
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A second attempt at resemanticizing Benja‟s masculinity occurs as a direct byproduct of the author‟s incursions into the realm of the natural as the protagonist visits the
house of a famed architect during a party. The owner of the house is described as an
ecologically conscious designer whose “construcciones se adaptan a la naturaleza y no dañan
el ecosistema” (49). The architect‟s abode is described in great detail by Simone, a Dutch
woman who befriends the protagonist in one of his many drug-fueled romps through the
privileged bars and discotheques of Santiago. She comments that the house “estaba inspirado
en el refugio de Lex Lutor” (49), making reference to the comic book Superman and his
nemesis.112 The connection between nature and Lex is strategic in that the author juxtaposes
the natural as villainous with the neoliberal apotheosis of masculinity in the shape of the
virile and benevolent Superman that filled Benja‟s childhood.113
We see in Barrio Alto another attempt at creating a viable alternative masculinity in
the face of multinational masculinity, though it is ironically a by-product of the latter‟s
spreading southwards in the guise of cultural imperialism. The role of the comic book
character in Latin American cultural discourses has grown exponentially as a series of books,
dissertations and articles question the impact of the comic on questions of identity. The
importance of comics in the cultural life of the continent is underlined by Héctor Fernández
L‟Hoeste and Juan Poblete as they argue that “graphic narratives such as comics have
constituted one of the important media in [the] connection between socio-economic
112
The use of North American superheroes as a referent when constructing masculinity is a recurrent tool in
contemporary fiction and can be seen in Ana Clavel‟s Los deseos y su sombra (1999) and Enrique Serna‟s La
sangre erguida (2010). The former juxtaposes indigenous, poor men to the crime-fighting figures of Superman
and Batman whereas the latter describes the man of steel as the apotheosis of masculine virility.
113
It is important to note the omission of popular Latin American superheroes as masculine referents in
contemporary fiction. Most notable are the omissions of the ethnically hybridized Kalimán and El Payo as local
rebuttals to Superman and the Lone Ranger.
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modernization, cultural matrices, and mass-mediatization” (3). Frederick Luis Aldama‟s Your
Brain on Latino Comics (2009) is a useful guide to understanding some of the implications of
the superhero in creating ideals of race (white is good, dark is bad) and gender (hyper virile
and muscular males, women as male-fantasy objects) (2-11). The earlier work by David
William Foster in From Mafalda to Los Supermachos: Latin American Graphic Humor as
Popular Culture (1989) is also useful in contextualizing the importance of North American
popular drawings such as the ubiquitous Disney characters in the economic liberalization of
Latin America in the second half of the 20th century.
What is important to keep in mind when talking about the influence of comics in the
region is the understanding that the graphic drawing market is not controlled by a single
group and is instead composed of interdependent spheres or genres. We can discern the
sphere of the North American superhero comic; the ironic social commentary of Condorito;
the Japanese-style Manga comics; and the adult-oriented offerings.114 The superhero,
however, is particularly useful when discussing masculinity in Rodríguez Matte‟s novel as
the protagonist declares that when younger he wanted to be Superman or the Green Lantern.
The schizophrenic man of steel from another planet (the United States?) posits an ideological
quandary for Benja as he is a product of the consumer-drive culture that he despises. The
ideological connections between Clark Kent and US imperialism are summed up in Higilio
Álvarez Constantino‟s La magia de los “comics” coloniza nuestra cultura (1978), as the
critic argues that Superman embodies North American arrogance in the hemisphere (86).
114
Created by Rene Ríos in 1949, this anthropomorphic inhabitant of the fictional Chilean town of Pelotillehue
is well known throughout Latin America as a reference to the common citizen. He is somewhat of an antihero,
unambitious and lackadaisical, who gets caught up in everyday problems and circumstances.
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Returning to the eco-aware architect‟s house, Rodríguez Matte engages Benja in a
struggle towards masculine subjectivity as he introduces the figure of the superhero as a
viable alternative to ecomasculinity. The protagonist disassociates himself from the natural as
he links himself to Superman and the anti-natural, but is unable to live up to the superhuman
expectations that come with wearing a red cape. At the party he encounters Montserrat, the
older sister of Max (a classmate and another representation of transnational masculinity), and
is seduced by her bad-girl airs as they lock themselves in a bathroom and frantically begin to
remove their clothing. Though Superman never engages in animalistic and passionate sex, his
virility is left unquestioned as he is able to leap buildings with a single bound and move
mountains. Benjamin‟s sexual prowess, however, leaves much to be desired in the shadow of
the man from Krypton as Montserrat takes control of the situation, domineering him into
satisfying her fantasy. She performs fellatio to her own rhythm and ignores his pleas for
intercourse. The decidedly lacking in superhuman-aura encounter “fue bastante rápido” (52)
as Benja is unable to embody the impossible masculinity of Superman.
The protagonist is further desubjectified when Montserrat asks him to introduce a
Grolsch beer bottle instead of his penis into her vagina. The choice of beer is not fortuitous,
as the brewery is owned by a multinational beverage company and has been at the center of
price fixing scandals with other companies such as Heineken and Bavaria between 1996 and
1999. The Grolsch bottle represents the economic interests of Connell‟s transnational
business masculinity as it replaces Benja‟s flaccid phallus in impaling the woman. From an
anthropomorphic standpoint the elongated neck and corked spout of the Grolsch bottle
replicates the coronal sulcus and glans of the male penis, emphasizing the absence of Benja‟s
phallus.
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Cowering from the inability to satisfy Montserrat in the presence of a superhuman,
neoliberal prosthetic penis, the protagonist flounders like a fish out of water as he is unable to
construct a masculine identity. The attempts to resemanticize himself through nature and
popular culture fail as the symbols of transnational masculinity continue to desubjectify him,
both spatially, through the dissolution of the barrio alto, and anatomically, through the
supplanting green-glass phallus. His physical body is further dematerialized in his failed
emulation of a television psychic who is able to foretell the future by reading the textures and
lines of his own anus.115 Benja‟s attempts, as we can well expect, fall terribly short as his
stepmother spies him in a compromising posture and accuses him of being a homosexual.
After his encounter with Montserrat, Benja‟s life spirals out of control as he increases
his alcohol and drug intake and is unable to maintain any relationship with his female and
male peers. His isolation and disassociation from the social milieu of upper-class Santiago is
punctuated by an overnight stay in jail and the death of Olaf. The protagonist ends his
journey by accepting to be the father of Olaf‟s baby as he begins a relationship with the
pregnant Javiera, echoing his physical and societal impotence in asserting a phallocentric or
patriarchal position.
At first glance the future is dismal and dark for Latin American masculinities that
must negotiate alternative positions and/or challenge neoliberal masculinity. The trope of
nature or the superhero fail, due in part to internal paradoxes of power, patriarchy and control
as the male is unable to appropriate that which has so successfully subjugated others. By
planting the problematic between conflicting masculinities in contemporary Latin American
115
The implications of the male anus recall Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo torero where the sphincter and its
physiological function were contextualized within an anti-Pinochet Leftist discourse. The anus here, however,
lacks the power to establish a politics of self or subjectivity in Barrio Alto, as it is demoted to a hysterical point
of homophobia that further alienates the protagonist from society.
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society, Barrio Alto succeeds in updating the cultural ennui experienced by Fuguet, Bayly
and others in the 1990s. The writing of masculinity in Rodríguez Matte‟s novel, however,
substantiates an alternative formation of the male body as it is coded and imagined as an
object, as a piece of technology that is separated from the biological determinism of gendered
bodies.
The protagonist and his friends ruminate on the symbolic analogies between personal
computers and human beings, arguing that some people are like traditional hard drives in that
they can store a lot of memory whereas others resemble random access memory (RAM)
chips that temporary hold information while the central processing unit (CPU) calculates and
performs operative functions. It is not surprising that the protagonist imagines himself as a
computer, half man and half technology, that is unable to “hablar con [su] naturaleza” (60).
The metaphor is extended in Benja‟s critique of transnational business masculinity as
he insists that his tie-wearing, 9-5 working peers all have a “preocupación por ganar y
competir. Para eso nos habían entrenado. Para eso habíamos sido programados. Aunque,
claro, a todos nos entró un virus en el camino” (99). The figure of the virus advances the
technical metaphor of the male body in Hernán Rodríguez Matte, but importantly places the
body within a larger hypertext markup language universe where subjectivity and location are
never set and defined, leading Benja to comment that “no estoy ni en el centro ni en el
exterior. Quizás no estoy en ninguna parte” (24). The body is virtualized in Barrio Alto,
beyond the simple transmogrification into a bundle of wires, silicon chips, and blinking LED
lights; it is a computer in a digital age where information and business transactions are wired,
deterritorialized, and instantaneous.
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The protagonist recurs to a technological idea of self at the end of the novel, after the
death of Olaf and the dissolution of the barrio alto, in a novelistic stroke evocative of
Fuguet‟s disenchanted character reassimilating into the homosocial. But unlike Matías, Benja
is not hesitant or vaguely pessimistic. He, instead, accepts the role he must take in a
topographically decentered city and society, as he “se vislumbraba una oportunidad para
reorganizar mi vida como un computador que se reinicia y logra reordenar todos sus archivos
desde el principio” (199). The subtle optimism in being able to press the „reset‟ button
evidences Rodríguez Matte‟s thesis of gender vis-à-vis the clean-cut minions of the
multinationals who are taking over Latin America. Though the subject has lost his position in
society and the city has shape-shifted into an unrecognizable constellation, the male body
still houses the potential to discursively reimagine a future, to re-image a hard drive littered
with faulty clusters and virus-infected files, to reformat the societal implications of the
“robots esclavizados” who infect the arterial veins of Santiago.
The future of masculinity in Benja‟s Santiago is summed-up by his association with
the Fasat Alfa satellite sent into orbit by the Chilean government as a sign of modernity and
welcoming the 21st century. The protagonist optimistically affirms that “en algún momento
Fasat Alfa logrará cumplir una misión que cambiará para siempre el curso de la historia
espacial de Chile y la gente la recordará por siempre. De algún modo, yo me siento como esa
sonda espacial” (86). By pressing the „reset‟ button and launching himself into the unmapped
infinity of space, Hernán Rodríguez Matte posits an anti-apocalyptic future for Latin
America, anchored in the reimagined masculinity of Benja.
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Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, or Cyborg Masculinity in Tokyo
I’m not a robot without emotions – I’m not what you see
I’m not a hero, I’m not a savior, forget what you know
I’m just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control
Styx, “Mr. Roboto.”
If Barrio Alto provides a reimagining of the corporal referents to the subject, and their
failure in articulating a hegemonic masculine discursive space, then what is left in
understanding the position of the individual within the larger matrix of the citified globe?
Working with the idea of transnationality, a series of authors both old and new are including
the foreign within their „Latin American‟ narratives, even as they continue to explore themes
of gender, class, and identity. From Clavel to Vargas Llosa, Belli to Bolaño, writers today are
more and more comfortable in narrating the disparate and exotic locales of Paris, Tokyo, and
Milan in their narratives. The transposition of these local dilemmas and tropes to the global,
however, does not entirely disassociate their fictions from their politico-economic spheres of
genesis. Vargas Llosa‟s Travesuras de la niña mala (2006) is emblematic of this shift, as the
author does not shy away from placing and critiquing Alberto Fujimori and his politics in
contemporary Tokyo. The fictionalization of Japan is not accidental, yet perhaps more
reflective of the increasing influence of Japanese culture in Latin America, as evidenced by
Mario Bellatin‟s fascination with all things from the Far East. At first glance, then, Santiago
Roncagliolo‟s Tan cerca de la vida (2010) follows the same trajectory as he situates his
narrative in Tokyo.
Peruvian by birth but resident of Barcelona by choice, Roncagliolo‟s previous works
have explored facets of terrorism (Abril rojo, 2006) and the problems of the middle class
(Pudor, 2005) in his native Lima. The controversial Memorias de una dama (2009),
conversely, forces his readers to go beyond the national as he narrates the memories of a lady
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of the upper class in the Dominican Republic. This latter work, though spatially separated
from Peru, reflects upon the effects of violence, terror and trauma in the context of collective
memory and remembering, following a strategy established by Vargas Llosa in his Trujillato,
and Iván Thays in Un lugar llamado Oreja de perro (2008). The use of a foreign context to
talk about Peru and/or Latin America continues in Tan cerca de la vida as the narrative picks
up the story of Max, a logistician working for the multinational company Corporación
Géminis, as he arrives in a postmodern Tokyo to participate in a conference on artificial
intelligence. The novel develops Max‟s feelings of not-belonging to the identity espoused by
the multinational and his subsequent affair with Mai, a hostess at the hotel hosting the
conference.
Roncagliolo‟s Tokyo is a carefully constructed site of disconnection and simulation.
It is discursively disconnected from the global network that Rodríguez Matte alludes to by
the quarantine operations at Narita airport: “Bienvenido a Tokio. Si siente algún tipo de
malestar, fiebre o tos, pase a la enfermería” (9). The control enforced at entry-points into the
city, which is to say a calculated reckoning of those subjects allowed within its discursive
walls, suggests that the author has created a space that is not the real Tokyo, but is instead an
assembled site of debate. It is a controlled, non-porous city-text that comes to life as
Roncagliolo dialogues with broader questions of technology, masculinity, neocolonialism
and globalization. The city of Tokyo in Tan cerca de la vida becomes a series of images and
simulacra, as Max spies a succession of images “[que] había visto en otras ciudades, la
mayoría sólo en películas: un castillo Disney, un puente de Brooklyn sobre un fondo de
edificios, una Torre Eiffel. Tokio parecía infestado de réplicas, como un parque temático de
las grandes ciudades” (10). The author suggests that the Tokyo we observe and read in the
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novel is nothing more than a collage of other metropolis, a pastiche of the modern world that
can easily be dislocated to any other global city.
Any allusions to a global space, however, are conflicted by the inclusion of
characteristically Japanese vignettes that the author emphasizes to lend credibility to his
simulation of Tokyo. The cemetery-like cubicles that serve as overnight hotels for
overworked urbanites who miss a train to the suburbs is not science fiction, though the
protagonist‟s surprise would suggest otherwise. Similarly, the manga-inspired café and the
cat brothel where city dwellers without pets go to get their fury fix are not figments of
Roncagliolo‟s imagination. This play between veracity and simulation, self and other, subject
and object, is a repeated trope in Tan cerca de la vida, as emphasized by the Corporación
Géminis billboards that dot the city‟s landscape. Showing close-up shots of frogs and other
living and non-living subjects that are reflected over a clear pool with the slogan
“Corporación Géminis, Tan cerca de la vida, Como dos gotas de agua” (116), the narrative
proposes a consideration of reality and subjectivity that is rooted in the visual and
experiential. Roncagliolo undoubtedly sparks inspiration from Hollywood projects that
repeatedly depict those spaces that come together in his vision of Tokyo, but further skims
off near-future, post-humanistic celluloid projects like Blade Runner, the Terminator series,
and Minority Report, to name a few, that explore the role of the human and its identity/body.
The author‟s reimagining of Hollywood is not the only filmic source for Tan cerca de
la vida, as the neo-horror scenes between Max and a mysterious girl in the hotel‟s elevator
lend a sly wink to the Japanese horror genre that has enjoyed recent critical and financial
success, particularly with Hollywood remakes of cult favorites such as The Ring (1998), The
Grudge (2000), and Dark Water (2002). This renaissance in the Japanese horror genre is
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characterized by the recurrent figure of the demonic, zombie-like child that signals a
narrative continuity with a horrific and covered-up past. The inclusion of this figure in Tan
cerca de la vida provides an authorial clue as to the true nature of Roncagliolo‟s protagonist,
adding to the discursive separation of Max and his surroundings from a textually veracious
Tokyo or identity.116
The development of a distinctly Japanese cinematic referent in the novel, vis-à-vis the
traditional inclusion of Hollywood and/or Mexican cinema tropes and figures calls to
attention the divide or binary that the author emphasizes with the visual cues and propaganda
for the corporation, which is prophetically named after the Zodiac constellation represented
by a set of twins, which on a symbolic level enshrine the dialectic of self that Roncagliolo
attempts to decipher in the novel. Twins, as we know, are genetically identical. Their
genotypes are replicas, with identical genomic expressions at all loci. There is, however, by
scientific logic, a single source, which is to say that within a pair of identical twins, one is
always the replica of the other. The source of origin, even within a seemingly identical
sampling of identical twins, is what interests Roncagliolo‟s investigation into the questions of
identity that espouse Tan cerca de la vida.
He establishes a point of entry into this quandary by juxtaposing Max to his
colleagues and the larger ideal of the Géminis man put forth by the corporation and its leader,
Marius Kreutz. The relationship between the individual and the company, the individual and
society, is what propels the narrative forward, as Max‟s unrest with belonging to the
carnavalesque assemblage of men, machines, and automatons establishes a diegetic point of
116
An exploration of the influence of popular Japanese culture in Tan cerca de la vida warrants critical
attention. From the dream-like spaces of the manga shops to the trope of the devil-child, Roncagliolo‟s text is a
veritable catalogue of popular Japanese culture whose study, unfortunately, falls outside the scope of these
pages.
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contention that permits an examination of his own identity vis-à-vis the group. The group,
composed of educated, international men of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds, is carefully
depicted in the narrative, escaping the superficial characterization of transnational business
masculinity that we observe in works such as Carlos Labbé‟s Locuela (2009), Ana Clavel‟s
Los deseos y su sombra (2000), and Maurice Echeverría‟s Diccionario esotérico (2006)
where Connell‟s transnational business masculinity makes a cameo appearance without any
authorial emphasis placed on understanding the gender expression. Roncagliolo goes beyond
diegetically confronting the businessman with subordinate masculinities and/or female
bodies, instead embarking on a thorough examination of how Connell‟s idea of a global
Masculine operates.
This contemporary idea of hegemonic masculinity as a sociological category, is
conceptualized by Connell as a transnational and transcultural subject position that escapes
traditional limitations of borders and cultures due to the over-arching reach of multinational
business in a neoliberal and globalized age. Transnational business masculinity as a gender
expression is intimately connected to the operational capabilities and characteristics of the
neoliberal economy, characterized by a lack of allegiance to any particular sociocultural
context and an egotistical reliance on the subject vis-à-vis other communities and their
interests. Men who express this gender configuration are, therefore, concerned primarily with
their own financial well being, without taking into account the negative impact their financial
transactions may have on the environment, women, and local hierarchies. They view corporal
bodies as marketable economic units within a global system of production. From a relational
standpoint, their position subordinates local masculinities and femininities through the
exportation and mechanization of jobs, and through their non-commitment to strengthen local
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infrastructures and social services. Their impact from a socioeconomic perspective is harshly
criticized by Connell, who views the specter of transnational business masculinity as a
demonic harbinger of the subordination of all other gender expressions as we move towards a
globalized 21st century.
From an aesthetic standpoint, and perhaps more pertinent to the textualities of fiction,
transnational business masculinity is slick, styled, and predatory. The men that work in
Corporación Géminis adhere to this mould, as they are meticulous in their grey suits and
stylishly coiffed hairdos. The chief executive officer of Géminis, Kreutz, is the bastion of
Connell‟s subject position, as he is quick to define this new breed of masculinity, this new
world order that is intent on global domination, and that is very different from previous
avatars of phallic power.
Kreutz, more importantly, gels together the idea of a unified transnational gender
expression as he always uses the first person plural subject when talking about the
corporation and its dealings, “decía somos una familia. O nos preocupamos por usted” (66).
There is no individual or self within the position of transnational masculinity, calling to
attention the paradox between the subject and the group that exists in Connell‟s theorization.
The individual who professes this brand of hegemonic masculinity must be highly self-reliant
and self-serving in his behavior, but can only attain this position of power through belonging
to a larger corporation of like-minded individuals, thereby emphasizing the unviability of the
position and its economic model. This paradox, however, simply adds to the critique of
neoliberalism as a short-sighted plan for development that does not foster any sense of
community or continuity to current systems and structures of power.
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The men that populate the convention center are representative of this paradox
between self and group that characterizes Connell‟s theorized position of power. They come
from different backgrounds, countries, and cultures, but are unified by their uniforms and
their adherence to rising within the power structures perpetuated by Géminis. Power within
the MNC, is created and perpetuated by the executive branch that makes decisions. Therefore
when Max introduces himself to his colleagues as someone who works in logistics, they
ignore him and instead wonder if peripheric departments have also been included in the
meeting. This is the first in a series of juxtapositions made between Max and the drones of
the corporation, emphasizing Roncagliolo‟s questioning of the hierarchies and hegemony of
transnational business masculinity.
Returning to the diegetic representations of transnational masculinity, we can see that
their bodies are too subjected to the nature of neoliberal economics, as they are “etiquetados,
como productos con códigos de barras” (40), like products in a global supply chain that can
always be tagged, located, and accounted for. The textual detail paid to this masculinity is
careful and thorough in Tan cerca de la vida, differentiating it from other narratives that
simplistically critique the role of the businessman in contemporary Latin American societies,
and its impact on other gender expressions. By creating Géminis, its workers, and Kreutz, the
author textualizes the threat of transnational business masculinity, putting forth a fictive
study of its systems, hierarchies, and semantics of power. This is fine and well, as from a
literary standpoint, an examination of the trope is needed, but what is the greater purpose of
delving into this power structure? Particularly within the Petri space that Roncagliolo
quarantines, what is the narrative aim of writing the transnational businessman?
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The answers to this problematic are rooted in the experiential and experimentative
protagonist that infiltrates the convention on artificial intelligence from his seemingly
peripheral role as a logistician that does not belong to the executive order of Corporación
Géminis. As evidenced in his rejection by his peers, we can note that Max plays a challenger
role to hegemonic masculinity. He does not occupy the categories of subordinate or complicit
masculinity, but is instead involved in a textual work in progress, a narrative examination of
how hegemony is constructed and what makes it tick. It is through the corporal body of Max
does Roncagliolo, then, attempt a challenge to the omnipresent hegemony of Kreutz and Co.
This affront is carried out through a calculated performance of gender on the part of
Max who after encountering the transnational businessmen of the company, “se dio ánimos
mentalmente. Se dijo que todo era cuestión de actitud. Ensayó movimientos naturales, de
hombre de mundo” (43), reflecting a Butlerian consciousness of gender.117 But this
performance fails abruptly as his co-workers ignore his standing within the company, as his
job description, and not his virility or musculature qualify him for inclusion within the
homosocial, as “se dio por vencido en el propósito de codearse con sus colegas. En vez de
confundirse entre ellos, trataría de apartarse de ellos” (45).
The construction of Max‟s masculinity fails at performing a viable position against
the hegemonic expression of gender, which Connell argues is the dilemma faced by
contemporary masculinities, but Roncagliolo follows Rodríguez Matte‟s cue of reimagining
the male body. Unlike the new historical novels that recalibrate the anus, testes, and mouth as
discursive sites of expression, Roncagliolo‟s futurist narrative computerizes the male
anatomy, but not through a superficial, semantic system of equivalencies between the body
117
We see a similar consciousness in the works of Belli, Clavel, Serna, Rivera Garza, Lemebel, and Galich,
though it is hypothesized that this literary trait goes beyond the corpus of these pages.
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and hardware. In Tan cerca de la vida, the distinction between technology and anatomy is
blurred, as the narrative confuses what is robotic and what is alive and breathing within a
larger matrix of how masculinities subsist under the yoke of hegemonic masculinity.
The fusions between technology and masculinity becomes a reality in the novel as the
company assigned PDA (personal digital assistant) “evalúa todas sus señales vitales, incluso
las físicas” (66). The handheld device becomes the new neural center of the globalized
subject who is connected to other bodies through the global positioning satellite system that
plots the minions of Géminis in relation to their desires, whether they be restaurants or
brothels and massage parlors. When Max is feeling lonely, for example, the device pops up
the following message: “sé de un lugar que ofrece compañía femenina. ¿Quieres la
dirección? ¿Información sobre tarifas?” (62). A praxis of technologizing the body does not
stop at the male bodies of the corporation but extends towards all spaces of the novel,
punctuated by the convention center where the latest advances in artificial intelligence are
paraded. Mixing in with the groups of international men in suits are a plethora of robotic
projects that perform various tasks. The little boy who sings oldies is the first example of
cybernetic engineering, though the designers “le habían dejado la parte posterior desnuda”
(21), to emphasize the artificial nature of the singing subject who is merely a glorified
jukebox in terms of the tasks it can perform.
Other robotic bodies in Tan cerca de la vida are not as clear cut in their adherence to
either side of the binary robot/human. The domestic assistant, BIBI, for example, recognizes
voices and commands and is designed to perform everyday household tasks. Kreutz
summarizes what she is able to do, including “contestar el teléfono (de hecho, ella es el
teléfono)” (26). Another robotic figure, DEV, is designed to deactivate explosive devices,
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and is marketed as a global necessity for police and security forces. Kreutz notes that “él y
BIBI son en este momento nuestros módulos estrella” (29). Note the genderizing of the
robotic body, as the domestic, anthropomorphically svelte servant with “labios sensuales”
(83) is automatically rendered female, whereas the brutish “cubo metálico con una puerta que
se abría y se cerraba, como si fuese a tragarse a alguien, y un solo brazo con una pala
mecánica” (27) is necessarily masculine. Commenting on the future of robotics and
cybernetics, Michelle Chilcoat comments that “the obsolescence of the body also implied the
loss of biological matter, traditionally viewed as the immovable or fixed material upon which
to construct gender differences and inscribe male privilege” (156). But this promise, we see,
is resisted from a linguistic standpoint as the robotic, non-human bodies are still categorized
as male and female, based on their performative and aesthetic characteristics. The
possibilities of the technological vis-à-vis gender often posit that the former provides an
avenue into dislocating traditional binaries. As Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman argue,
technology and cyberspace have a “contradictory position, in that [they] offer its users the
opportunity to swap gender at will, but frequently the alternative gender identities chosen
have recourse to gender stereotypes” (13-4). The technological and cybernetic in Tan cerca
de la vida fulfill this evaluation of a gendered post-human existence, as the machines
engineered, designed and produced by the company perpetuate the gender structures of
Corporación Géminis.
Following this line of argumentation, the technological gendered bodies of BIBI and
DEV do not pose a challenge to the hegemonic, but they operate instead as a rhetorical tool
in the construction of Max as the true challenger to Kreutz and the corporation. Just as he is
juxtaposed to the executive branch of Géminis, Max is contrasted with the automatons that
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exemplify the purely robotic. While riding the elevator with one of the robots, she asks him
how his day has been, to which he replies: “no dormí nada […] Me emborraché con unos
tipos que trataron de atacar a una mujer. Y luego tuve pesadillas” (82). Adhering to the
categorization of non-human, thereby implying a cerebral inability to produce coherent
language, the robot responds: “yo también tengo una buena mañana” (82), emphasizing the
disconnect between Max and the alternative to transnational business masculinity at the
convention.
Before continuing, it bears mentioning that Max‟s reflections on his own behavior
and performance qualifies him as robotic and repetitive in his need to categorize and organize
information as part of his job, but also in his descriptions of his subjectivity, as love, for
instance, “era un dato fuera de su sistema lógico. Un electron libre de su experiencia” (85).
By alluding to the body as a machine, Roncagliolo seems to hint that Max is more robot than
human, at least more robot than transnational masculinity, but disqualifies this postulate
through the incoherent dialogism between the protagonist and the robot. By playing the
character off against several positions along the masculine and robot-human binary, the
narrative calls to attention the problem with conceiving the subject along a two-fold system,
putting forth instead a theory of continuity that is less drastic in its separation of man from
machine, and from power.
This strategy is brought to fruition in the subsequent conversation between Max and
Kreutz as the former notes that BIBI, DEV, LUCI and the other examples of artificial
intelligence are not very intelligent at all. Standing in front of the executive board of directors
headed by Kreutz, Max affirms that LUCI is just a machine and lacks the cerebral coherence
to truly be intelligent. The CEO surprisingly supports his position, exclaiming that “LUCI es
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una máquina. Ése es el problema, y no hay nada que podamos hacer para solucionarlo…Por
mucho que aceleremos sus movimientos, incrementemos su repertorio de frases hechas o la
forremos con cuero de cero, no conseguiremos cambiar ese hecho esencial” (86). Kreutz, and
by definition, the corporation‟s aim is to create something more than machine, something
“capaz de aprender, de adquirir todas las habilidades que le demande su entorno, de adaptarse
a cualquier situación nueva y extraer de ella conclusiones para prever situaciones futuras”
(88). The corporation‟s intentions, however, are not to create a human but to engineer life,
placing the onus on the action of programming, designing, and manufacturing gendered
bodies that are enslaved to the deified position of the transnational corporation and its
particular trope of masculinity.
It is at this juncture that Roncagliolo‟s novelistic imagination appropriates the clichés
and repeated scenarios of science fiction and Hollywood, where man and machine coalesce
into a cybernetic hybrid that is neither one or the other, eliminating the binary and
establishing a continuum of being that challenges the hierarchical power of the hegemonic. It
takes little detective work on the part of the reader to deduce that Max is not a simple worker
in the corporation as he is invited to this high-level meeting and is favored over the
homosocial mass in understanding the corporation‟s next move. His personal circumstances
and the textual cues that point to an unresolved past and domestic situation with his wife
furthermore add an aura of suspense and suspicion to his background. This is cemented by
Kreutz as he notes that Max is different than “los miles de mediocres que tenemos en nómina
y que se pasan la vida hinchando sus méritos para conseguir promociones” (89). The
protagonist is neither robotic nor masculine (in the hegemonic sense), but is instead
something else.
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This other identity is the mixture of human and robot, the cyborg that Donna
Haraway theorizes in her manifesto against patriarchy. The novel, however, rehashes the
narrative recognition of otherness that has characterized neo-futuristic Hollywood narratives
that revolve around a point of self-consciousness that establishes the subject as non-human.
Akin to Arnold Schwarzenegger‟s character in The Sixth Day (2000) who realizes that he is
clone of his previous self, Max realizes that his current body has been reengineered and
reproduced. He used to work for a large business, but committed suicide after murdering his
family and cutting out the eyes of his daughter.118 He is reprogrammed and regenerated just
as he arrives at Tokyo airport, emphasizing the spatial separation of the narrative in the
simulated space of the Japanese capital. Max‟s moment of unveiling or auto-subjectification
occurs just as Kreutz markets the protagonist‟s body to a group of Japanese investors,
commenting that “Max está rediseñando toda la estructura comercial de nuestra corporación.
Es un trabajo que debería hacer un equipo de técnicos, ingenieros y abogados, pero él lo está
realizando en solitario, ¿no es increíble?” (249). Any doubts as to Max‟s condition of cyborg
are dispelled as Kreutz recalls the Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix and its imagined world
of artificial intelligence and generated experiences, explaining to Max that he is now a
product of the transnational corporation‟s engineering.
Writing Max as a cyborg body in opposition to the transnational business masculinity
of his peers at Corporación Géminis posits a strategic challenge to the quandary of
hegemonic masculinity in the 21st century, given Connell‟s emphasis placed on the overarching power of this masculinity over previous systems of control such as the military. This
118
The explanation of the dead girl in the elevator follows the narrative trope evidenced in the revival of
Japanese horror cinema, where the demonic child is a call to the protagonist‟s consciousness of a past
moral/legal infringement.
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new incarnation of masculine power does not adhere to traditional codes or aesthetics of
masculinity or phallic power, as Kreutz affirms “esto no es el ejército” (68). The cyborg as a
strategy of subverting patriarchy is forwarded by Haraway who argues that “cyborgs have
more to do with regeneration and are suspicious of the reproductive matrix and of most
birthing […] We require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities of our reconstitution
could include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender” (38-9).
The power of the cyborg as a body lies in its unconformity with the process of reproduction
that stresses the anatomic differences that give rise to a semantic, sociological, and
theological system of gender. By reneging from the commitment to the duality of
reproduction, the cyborg body resists the genderizing tentacles of patriarchy and can posit a
theoretical paradigm for understanding the self, rooted in the blurring of boundaries and
dualities.
What is important to note at this point is Haraway‟s vision for the cyborg as a
decentering force vis-à-vis patriarchy and its subjugation of women. The role of women and
men in Tan cerca de la vida is not nearly as problematized or problematic as the relationship
between transnational business masculinity and subordinated masculinities. Roncagliolo‟s
text maintains the domination of man over woman, as evidenced by the sexual relations
between Max and Mai, the hostess at the convention that starts a romantic relationship with
him. We learn that Mai too is a cyborg, a regenerated suicide victim who given the
technological limitations of earlier models cannot speak, but instead communicates through a
silent language that Max and other cyborgs understand. Sex between Max and Mai is
consensual, but always violent and assertive as the male takes a dominating role over the
female cybernetic body. The author is careful, however, in writing these scenes as he dabbles
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between the line of rape and BDSM as he describes how Mai lets out “bocanadas de aire que
podían ser tanto de placer como de sufrimiento” (178). The subservience of the female is not
purely coital, as Roncagliolo‟s narrative condemns the female cyborg body to an objectified
position that appears sporadically in the second person register, seemingly placing the reader
within the position of the dominated female. The feminine lacks narrative and narratological
subjectivity in Tan cerca de la vida, to the extent that it is only the male cyborg that can
actively stand against Kreutz‟s transnational business masculinity. Therein lies Roncagliolo‟s
reinterpretation of the cyborg manifesto, as his foray in the blurred bodies of the non-human
and non-robotic is not necessarily concerned with decentering patriarchy, but is instead a
challenge to one masculinity by another.
Commenting on the cyborg figure in contemporary fiction, Geoffrey Kantaris
observes that:
The Latin American cyborg seems to condense specific anxieties surrounding the
dissolution of collective identities and collective memory, anxieties which connect
historically to the experience of colonization on the one hand and, on the other, to the
erasure of the nation as a space of collective agency and memory, an erasure which
seems to be inscribed in the very mechanisms which affect the transition from nationstate to global market. (52)
The Latin American cyborg is essential, therefore, in condensing these subjective anxieties
that are reactive of broader processes of change, but maintains the essential anxiety behind
the crisis of masculinity produced by demographic changes in the continent. The Latin
American cyborg, therefore, is not Haraway‟s cyborg that potentiates the dissolution of
gender, but is instead a body that, from a literary standpoint, provides a metonymic challenge
to the forces of change and the structures of subjugation. The protagonist in Tan cerca de la
vida is not a condensing of the anxieties of gender change, but is instead a symbolic
coalescing of the anxiety faced by Latin American men at the mercy of transnational business
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masculinity that has successfully supplanted and eviscerated traditional metaphors and
positions of power.
The writing on the body here, in difference to Rodríguez Matte‟s technologically
imagined body, is built upon the fantastic identity of the cyborg as a symbolic affront and not
as a theorized reappropriation of the male anatomy. It is not preoccupied with gender
democratization or the ending of patriarchal systems, but is instead focused on decentering
the omniscient power of the hegemonic that other narratives take as axiomatic. Unlike the
masculinities evidenced in Galich, Labbé, and Echeverría that posit a subjugated but
subversive male identity to the transnational, Roncagliolo puts forth a neo-scientific
commodification of the male body that refuses to follow the orders of Kreutz and the
Corporación Géminis. At first glance, it seems that Roncagliolo‟s writing echoes the words
of Taylor and Pitman who argue that “rather than aping metropolitan literary currents, […]
Latin American writers are feeling the need to think through the implications that global
technologies have for the writing of the Latin American experience” (20). Upon further
review, however, it is clear that the author is not preoccupied with the local or continental
crisis of masculinity, but is instead scripting a transnational, non-specific text that lacks
political, geographic, and linguistic markers of origin, much like the products of a neoliberal
economy.
The novel ends with a confrontation between Max and Kreutz as the latter informs the
protagonist of his true genesis from a harvested body that later undergoes cybernetic
implantation and programming to become the corporation‟s latest product. Astounded,
deceived, and confused, Max is informed that the cyborgs (Mai and Max, amongst others)
are programmed to shut down if they cannot “vivir más consigo mismos” (312), and as a
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final recourse, enter a destructive kamikaze setting that ensures their inevitable end. It is at
this moment that the protagonist‟s non-organic yet very human masculinity confronts
Kreutz‟s explanation, asking if the cyborgs cannot think with a mind of their own and go
around the self-destructive parameter. The CEO‟s reply is symptomatic of an essentialist and
supremacist paradigm that underscores transnational business masculinity‟s handling of other
gender expressions, claiming that “nada puede violar su naturaleza […] Un león no puede ser
un elefante” (313).
Faced with this fatalist pre-determinism, Max‟s subsequent actions point towards a
refusal to accept the role tendered by the hegemonic as he throws away the PDA device that
previously connected his body to the global network created and controlled by Kreutz and
company. He leaves the hotel where all traces of his being are erased and moves away from
the cybernetic, globalized, and synthetic space of Roncagliolo‟s Tokyo to a deserted
cemetery shrouded by cherry trees. With a suitcase in hand, both cyborgs reunite, Max the
newest version and Mai, the prototype, challenging their preprogrammed nature to destroy
each other. The two non-humans stand together as the snow falls and “las primeras flores de
la temporada asomaban entre los copos, como bebés recién nacidos” (328), suggesting that
regeneration and not reproduction is what lies ahead. The cherry trees, we must remember,
flower at an exact moment every year, regenerating a visual and floral moment that defies the
laws of reproduction, as they operate on a disparate timetable from fertilization, pointing
towards the possibility of regeneration as a strategy of combating the hegemonic order. The
meeting between Mai and Max, and their relationship, however, does not undermine or
challenge heteronormative patriarchy, as men are still in control and women lack a voice of
reason or protest.
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The writing of the male body in Tan cerca de la vida is predicated on an
understanding of the new order of masculinity as Latin America and the world leave behind
the artificial categorizations of nation and sovereignty in the face of an economic order that
crosses borders and demographics, establishing a system that promulgates a culture of wealth
and accumulation at the expense of all other gendered bodies. The male body as a textual
creation, however, empathizes with and strategically reappropriates the figure of the cyborg
as a decentering force that melds man and machine, in a reimagining of a new Eden that
posits an optimistic future for the male against transnational business masculinity.119
Transnational Viagraphies in Enrique Serna‟s La sangre erguida
The problem’s plain to see: too much technology
Machines to save our lives. Machines dehumanize
The time has come at last
To throw away this mask
Styx, “Mr. Roboto.”
The writing of masculinity in the 21st century is not simply a structuralist construction
that engages in gender and/or political warfare. There is a broader group of writers that
openly discuss issues of male sexuality and gender through a discursive focus on the body
and its traditional loci of power and identification. From writers such as Giovanna Rivero,
Cristina Rivera Garza, Ana Clavel, Jaime Bayly and Maurice Echeverría, there has been a
steady textual production that contemplates how and why masculinity is defined. A writer at
the forefront of this movement is the Mexican Enrique Serna, whose La sangre erguida
(2010) portrays the psychological and physiological intricacies of manhood, through the
119
The idea of writing paradise either as escapism or as a rearticulated possibility vis-à-vis gender is not
exclusive to the continuum of masculinity. Gioconda Belli embarks on a similar task in El infinito en la palma
de la mano where she refocuses the constructs of femininity through the writing of the biblical Eden.
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intricate telling of the lives of three Hispanic men irreversibly connected by the atomic bonds
of C22H30N6O4S.
Known as an accomplished novelist, essayist, cronista, and journalist, Serna‟s earlier
narratives have focused on the historical novel and the state of the arts in contemporary
Mexico. The latter lies at the center of El miedo a los animales (1995), where through the
charade of a detective novel, the author pens a harsh insider criticism of the way Mexican
literature and the publishing houses work. His two recent novels written after the booming
success of El seductor de la patria (1999) reflect a shift away from the themes of history and
politics as he focuses on male sexuality and masculinities in contemporary Mexican society,
reflective of much of his earlier essayistic work. In Fruta verde (2006), for example, he
samples the bisexual experimentation of a young writer/journalist who has a relationship with
a homosexual writer who mentors his career.120 Exploring the many facets of desire, gender,
and (public and private) sexuality, the novel causes a stir amongst readers accustomed to the
figure of the seemingly heterosexual writer who does not shy away from hinting at certain
autobiographical notes that hint at making the novel a coming-out experience for Serna.121
Continuing with an examination of not-so-comfortable topics, La sangre erguida
(2010) narrates the lives of three men living in Barcelona, all connected by the omnipotent
120
The novel bears some similarities to the works studied in Chapter 2. My notion of the literary O.S.T.
provides a fruitful optic to study the erotics of the text. Taken from the title of a popular bolero by Luis Alcaraz,
the lyrics to the bolero structure the relationship between the protagonist, Germán, and his older homosexual
lover, Mauro, and his mother and her younger lover, who is the best friend of the protagonist. The title of the
song, like Tengo miedo torero, establishes a power relationship between the lovers, as the young fruit in each
relationship is held up as a forbidden delicacy that tempts the older, more mature lover who must resist the
urges that direct our libidos.
121
I am aware here of the dangers of calling Fruta verde a novel of coming out, as the verb is plagued with
intrinsic cultural problems. On the one hand, coming out is a North American idea, extraneous to many cultures
where homosexual activity is not to be confused with a homosexual identity. Secondly, though the work does
point towards an autobiographical tone, the relationship between author/work/protagonist is a dicey one at best,
and any attempts at drawing corollaries runs up against the authorial disclaimer of fiction.
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dictatorship of the penis and the impending fear and reality of its flaccid fall. In what can be
considered a biography, or “viagrafía” (306) of a Mexican, Catalan and Argentine man,
Serna interrelates the stories of a man subjugated by a voluptuous Dominican lounge singer,
a businessman who suffers from anxiety related impotence, and a porn star who can control
his penis at will to create a narrative flush with the importance of the Latin phallus in the age
of globalization.122
The writing of men in La sangre erguida evidences a separate strain of fiction that
does not necessarily engage in a class or group-based mentality of writing and challenging
masculinities, but is instead focused on the microwars fought by men on a daily basis to
establish and perpetuate their masculinities. There is a focus on the body, specifically the
penis, and its role in the subjective and textual construction of the protagonists that populate
Serna‟s fiction. Told through alternating chapters with a liberal use of intertexts, memoirs,
and prison documentation, the novel chronicles the lives of three different, yet very similar
men in turn-of-the-century Barcelona. Coming from three distinct backgrounds and
circumstances, the city establishes a globalized tableau onto which their narrative trajectories
are plotted amidst the hustle and bustle of multinational corporations, local chino stores, and
the many ethnic neighborhoods that color the cityscape. It is, importantly, not a Latin
American city per se that functions as the textual referent for the subjects‟ gender, as seen in
Clavel‟s earlier novels and Fuguet‟s Santiago, to name a few examples. Serna‟s usage of
Barcelona articulates the failure of space in establishing a paradigm or practice of gender
122
Serna employs tropes and strategies inspired from Hollywood productions, much like Roncagliolo in Tan
cerca de la vida. The figure of the ghostly girl who serves as a rhetorical interlocutor to Juan Luis in the mental
institution evokes the ethereal relationship between phantasm and troubled subject in M. Night Shyamalan‟s
The Sixth Sense (1999).
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identification that leaves the characters in an existential cloud that problematizes their
relationships with the penis and its implications on masculinity.
The traditional spaces of masculinity in La sangre erguida, however, exist on an
operative level as the brothel, for example, appears as a space of becoming man. The Catalan
character, Ferrán, repeatedly finds himself in a brothel where prostitutes bring him to orgasm
through non-coital stimulation, highlighting his impotence as an obstruction towards the path
of establishing a politically and economically privileged masculinity in Barcelona. The
brothel, however, is a product of globalization, and is not the traditional house of prostitutes
that paves the way to adulthood.123 The character‟s visits to the brothel, furthermore, only
serve to highlight his inability to sustain an erection, which underscores the narrative
importance given to the penis. Ferrán suffers from psychological impotence triggered by
bouts of anxiety that originate in his first sexual encounter as a teenager. Unable to achieve
an erection for coitus, he satisfies himself by being successful at work and through intense
masturbation sessions.
The Argentine Juan Luis has an opposite relationship with his penis, as he is able to
control its blood-filled vesicles with the power of his brain. After experiencing an
involuntary erection as a child when his mother was taking his temperature, he vows to never
be betrayed and attains the quasi magical ability to raise his penis on command, leading to
his eventual success as an actor in pornographic movies. His career, however, is intimately
sabotaged by an uncooperative penis that will only rise to the touch of Laia, a women that he
123
The brothel in La sangre erguida shares more in common with the Americanized whorehouse in Mayra
Santos-Febres‟s Nuestra Señora de la noche (2006) than Donoso‟s rural structure in El lugar sin límites (1966).
The brothel as product or symbol of globalized economics signals both an entry into the homosocial and the
influence of globalized gendered norms into traditional expressions of masculinity, femininity and queer
identities.
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serendipitously meets and falls in love with. The character‟s storyline highlights the position
of the penis in contemporary sexuality as it is through its dominance, control, and size that
men aspire to the virtual and idyllic aesthetics of global pornography.
The power of the physical phallus highlights the condition of the Mexican, Bulmaro,
as he leaves behind a wife and children in Mexico City, and is subjugated to the desires and
whims of Romelia, a Dominican lounge singer who brings him to Barcelona searching for
her big break in show business. Their relationship inverts the traditional roles of man and
woman, as it is Bulmaro who is the househusband that begrudgingly welcomes Romelia after
she has a night out with Wilson Mendoza, a music producer who promises riches. Upon
smelling alcohol in her breath and another man‟s cologne, he observes that “lo mismo hacía
mi mujer cuando yo regresaba pedo de mis parrandas” (183). He is also in charge of cleaning
the house and preparing food, calling to attention his assumption of traditional feminine
duties. Perhaps the greatest inversion from the position of being a macho latino comes in the
shape of his attitude towards modern women, as he characterizes them as jealous Don Juanas
who jealously rein in the male gaze whilst unabashedly flirting and fornicating with a bevy of
men.124
The relationship between Bulmaro and Romelia evokes the importance of the penis in
writing masculinity, as it functions as a metonymic representation of the male-gendered
subject within the broader matrices of power that form the fabric of diegetic societies. His
disenfranchisement and emasculation, for example, is corroborated by his flailing genital
appendage as he attempts to reassert his position as penetrator in their relationship, thereby
124
Serna mockingly disdains modern magazines that exult women to have multiple affairs and lovers, claiming
that the institution of marriage is nullified and that monogamy is not an option for Mexican men in the 21 st
century (Las caricaturas me hacen llorar 19, Giros negros 45).
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reassuming the social benefits of the male. We note how “la puso bocabajo con bruscas
maneras de violador, para cogérsela como lo que era: una perra libidinosa” (190), only to be
foiled by “su blandengue instrumento” (191) that refuses to be engorged. The idea of the
failing penis has been rehashed by writers attempting to pen a non-hegemonic position, but
its inclusion in La sangre erguida goes beyond a simple literary artifice of characterization.
Like a plethora of writers who cite and/or write the theories of gender scholars, Serna is
acutely aware of the power of the biological phallus from a textual standpoint, knowing fullwell that sexual impotence is a metaphor for societal impotence.
The writer aptly and amply uses literary referents that have historically constituted
gender norms in the Hispanic letters. From quotes and references to Don Juan Tenorio and
Martín Fierro, he juxtaposes canonical representations of the macho with contemporary men
who model their behavior on the masculine figures of literature. The Argentine Juan Luis, for
example, exclaims that he must win over his lover “como los gauchos del Martín Fierro, que
seguían luchando con un trabucazo en la espalda” (198). The relationship between literature
as a means and mechanism of doing gender is reflected upon in Serna‟s narrative,
highlighting the connection made between the potency of the penis, or lack of, in the
construction of the diegesis. Just as the writers of the new historical novels sampled in
Chapter 1 focused on the discursive sites of the male body to problematize gender within
debates of the nation, Serna appropriates the penis as a metaphor for writing masculinity onto
the globalized and neoliberal climate of Barcelona.
The powerful/weak dialectic of the penis in the novel circumscribes the author‟s
understanding of masculinity in crisis. Commenting on the state of virility in contemporary
Mexico, “El imán del andrógino” begins with a simple question: “¿Qué le verán las mujeres a
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Leonardo Di Caprio, si es una nena?” (Giros negros 41). Serna picks up this question as a
mode of reflecting on the increased prevalence of feminized and ambiguated masculinities
that partake in the “devaluación de la virilidad en el mercado mundial de valores eróticos”
(41). This “devaluación” is exemplified by the androgynous men who attain heartthrob status
in contemporary popular culture in Latin America and abroad. In Giros negros, a collection
of essays from the 1990s, he extrapolates the failing power of traditionally virile masculinity
in the face of feminized and emasculated bodies that shock the Latin macho into
contemplating a strategy of change. Faced with the devaluation of traditional virility, it
comes as no surprise, then, that La sangre erguida contemplates the theme of impotence as a
modern affront to traditional masculinity.
The novel is centered on the supply and demand of the erectile dysfunction drug
Viagra, which caused a seismic shift in talking about male sexuality, as it became
mainstream to discuss the flaccid problems of age and anxiety that were previously held at
bay by public displays of machismo. The acceptance of these drugs in the Spanish-speaking
world, however, did not benefit from Super Bowl advertisements or sponsored vehicles in
NASCAR; impotence and its medical alleviators remain a hidden and sensitive topic in a
cultural matrix where figures such as Leonardo Di Caprio cause a realignment in the
aesthetics of desirable masculinity.
The theme of impotence in La sangre erguida is more than purely physiological, as
Serna emphasizes the societal disenfranchisement of his characters through the metaphoric
connotations of the noun. Men are not only sexually impotent but unable to assert themselves
as lovers, husbands, and heads of the household. A prime example is the husband of Ferrán‟s
ex-girlfriend, Gregorio Martínez. Upon discovering that his wife is leaving him for the
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sildenafil citrate popping businessman, he disappears into his studio for half an hour, only to
emerge “con las mallas negras de mimo, la cara y las manos maquilladas de blanco. Se había
pintado en los pómulos dos lagrimas con marcador negro, y en el pecho un corazón rojo con
espinas […] él quería [gritar] su dolor en el lenguaje que mejor domina. Hizo la pantomima
de arrancarse el corazón y pisotearlo en el suelo” (256). The mime is unable to speak or act
on his betrayal and emblemizes the fall of the macho Latino to a position of subservience,
away from the traditional role of womanizer and head of the household. Not only is Gregorio
cuckolded but also reneged of the power of speech to protest, cementing his status as a
second-tiered gendered subject within the erotics of Serna‟s globalized Barcelona.
Faced with the inevitability of a gender democratic future, Serna‟s characters
retrograde into their own bodies as they attempt to find the answers to the problematization
of traditional systems of masculinity that held them to impossible and powerful standards.
There is a cognitive separation between the self and the penis, the subject and its libidinal
appendage, that drives the narrative forward. All three protagonists maintain extended
conversations with their penises, isolating their true identities from what it forces them to do.
Bulmaro, for example, comments that he no longer has free will and feels like “el último
eslabón en la cadena de mando” (22). A similar separation occurs in Ferrán when he stops to
ponder the mental disconnect between the penis and the mind, asking “¿por qué la voluntad
puede alzar una pierna o un brazo, y en cambio no tiene control sobre el pene? […] ¿Qué
oscuro poder gobierna el mecanismo hidráulico de la erección?” (31). The separation of the
subject from the penis calls to attention the importance of the body in understanding and
doing gender, if we are to rely on the ideas of Judith Butler and others who emphasize that
bodies do matter in concocting a theory and/or praxis of gender. Even when in drag and
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usurping traditional norms of virility, the male body never loses the penis and is dictated by a
separate criteria that labels a serious of behaviors, appearances, and diction that we term
masculine.
The penis as a physiological and discursive site is appropriated by Serna as he
emphasizes its hold over male subjectivity. Though it is textually separated from Bulmaro,
Ferrán, and Juan Luis, it is not a separate entity but instead a controlling force that reigns
over their every move. Men in La sangre erguida operate under the autocratic regime of a
“dictadura de la testosterona” (20) headed by a “caudillo rapado” (147) who orders their
movements. It is not fortuitous that the penis is described as a caudillo that is
uncompromising in its power, evoking the writing of the dictators we saw in Chapter 2. By
writing the caudillo and semanticizing different sites of his anatomy writers such as Serna,
Vargas Llosa, Lemebel, Ramírez and Rivera Garza are able to challenge traditional structures
and hierarchies of power as societies shift in the wake of a neoliberal tsunami that
indiscriminately overruns shores. The focus on the penis, however, aligns La sangre erguida
with Vargas Llosa‟s Trujillato, as though the penis is problematized and made vulnerable, it
is never fully castrated from a position of hegemony. We observe its challenge and reclaimed
power in the relationship between Bulmaro and Romelia as she kicks him out of their
apartment after a heated argument. Out on the street and smarting from being emasculated by
the domineering lounge singer, Bulmaro contemplates “hacerse respetar a la Antigua, con un
par de nalgadas y una buena cogida” (146) but hesitates to follow through as he is conscious
of his secondary role in the household. What follows is a debate with the little caudillo that
encourages him to admit his mistake and to climb back in bed with Romelia, but Bulmaro
resists, instead opting to pack his bags and leave. He undermines the dictator‟s wishes and
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takes the reins of subjectivity, ordering the caudillo to “baja[rse] del trono y entreg[arle] la
corona” (149).
His domestic politicking has the desired effect as Romelia chases him onto the street
where “le bastó forcejear con ella un momento para comprender que había bajado a rendirse”
(150). Their bout of make-up sex leaves the two satisfied and fatigued, as Bulmaro lights a
cigarette and comments to his penis: “te lo dije, compadre, a los dos nos conviene que me dé
a respetar” (150). Though at first glance it seems that the subject has overthrown the phallic
dictator, it is upon closer inspection that we realize that nothing has changed; Bulmaro is
back in the household and is still the last in command, subjugated by the will of Romelia and
the libido of the caudillo. He is removed from his previous position of power, afforded by
patriarchy, and relegated to the role of the subservient housewife, not challenging patriarchal
systems of domination or the importance of the penis in determining masculine expression.125
The autonomous condition of the penis, from a subjective and textual position,
underlines the author‟s preoccupation with a crisis in masculinity that does not go unnoticed
in the scenes in which the protagonists engage in coitus with their lovers. When Bulmaro has
sex with Romelia, for example, “estaba tan entregado a ella que en el umbral del éxtasis
perdió la noción del yo, como si Romelia fuera una usurpadora de cuerpos y se penetrara a sí
misma con el pene que le había robado” (22). A similar sexual dynamic is described by
Ferrán, as he notes how “dentro y fuera de su coño, logré ser al mismo tiempo actor y
observador de la cópula” (73). The power of the penis as agent of penetration paradoxically
relegates men to a position of voyeur, removed from the power struggles of penetration that
physiologically support patriarchy.
125
There is a system of usurpation that connects La sangre erguida to the caudillo-politics of La fiesta del
Chivo, as in both the apparent coup only solidifies the phallic power of the dictator.
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This is best illustrated in Serna‟s take on the pornography industry, as narrated
through the travails of Juan Luis. After having enjoyed tremendous success in the Californian
mecca of adult entertainment due to his telekinetic prowess, the Argentine now moonlights as
an expensive and exclusive gigolo. The industry, he explains is built around the male
erection, as he loses castings to “vergas nuevas” (44) who benefit from the modern-day
advances in video editing and photo retouching. His ephemeral presence in the business is
combined with an acid critique of the directors, producers and distributors of modern
pornography, described as “buitres de la libido, vendedores de frustraciones al mayoreo”
(116). More importantly, the digitalization and virtualization of sex has led “[al] ser humano
de fin de milenio [a ser] un ente que no piensa con su cerebro ni hace el amor con su cuerpo,
un minusválido emocional aplastado por las imágenes y las cosas” (Las caricaturas me
hacen llorar 19-20). In describing his life as a gigolo, Juan Luis further demotes himself from
subjectivity when he observes that his female clients “decidían cuándo querían llevárselo a la
cama y cuándo lo desechaban, eran ellas quienes lo usaban para cumplir sus fantasías
eróticas, mientras él perdía iniciativa y capacidad de elección” (155). It is this attitude of
disenchantment that highlights the commodification of the penis as the new locus of
hegemony over the male and his body. We evidence this in the comments of one of Juan
Luis‟s customers who notes that the vibrator is “el marido ideal” (53).
This disconnect and its effects are brought to fruition in the pill-popping and Viagraempowered character of Ferrán who assumes the schizophrenic identity of Amador Bravo:
“di por muerto a Ferrán Miralles, el agachado solterón sin agallas para ligar, y adopté como
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programa de vida el nombre de mi álter ego Amador Bravo” (122).126 The autoscopic
reimagining of the narrative voice evidences what happens when the little caudillo is given
free reign and the male body completely loses subjectivity. Unlike the dialogue established
by Bulmaro that resists complete control, Ferrán‟s identity is overrun by the penile politician
who assumes power.
The Catalan‟s body becomes a site of converging forces that are artificially concocted
by the pirated Viagra that he buys from Bulmaro. On the one hand it seems that the character
metonymizes a political discourse of autocracy and the potential failings of given a single
person or entity complete control. He routinely seduces and forces women to have sex with
him and records them in the act, fueled by a desire of “la contemplación, no de los cuerpos
que había poseído, sino de [su] propio desempeño en la cama. Narciso posmoderno, lo que
más [le] fascinaba de esa pornografía casera era ver[se] de pronto con el nabo erecto cuando
cam[biaron] de postura. Ellas eran un mero instrumento para glorificar [su] pene, para ceñirle
la diadema de emperador y pasearlo en triunfo por las calles de Roma” (177). On the other
hand, there is a sustained consciousness of the artificiality of the testosterone dictatorship, as
it is only through the bootlegged Chinese pills can he experience a strong enough erection for
sex. As one of many clients of Bulmaro, who markets the pills for a local storeowner, Deng,
Ferrán is involved in the black market of pharmaceuticals that in itself serves as a critique of
the business of healthcare that ensure large profits for multinationals that have no qualms in
126
The autoscopic separation of Ferrán from Amador in the novel harkens to Juan Marsé‟s El amante bilingüe
(1990) where a similar process defines the neurotic condition of the protagonist who suffers a psychological
break when he spies his wife with an Andalusian lover. He assumes a new personality, speaking and thinking as
a Don Juan figure to reclaim a position of hegemony after being emasculated. Issues of Catalan autonomy,
though not explicated in Serna‟s text but do exist as an underlying layer to the space of Barcelona, is
fundamental in Marsé‟s incursion into the linguistic hierarchies of masculinity.
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parlaying their economic might into instigating police raids on generic and contraband
providers.
The sustainable erections that enable Ferráns narrative doubling and assumption of a
hegemonic sexual position are only facilitated through “el poder de la farmacopea” (71),
calling to attention the engineered condition of his body that is punished with incarceration
after one of the homemade videos is posted on the internet. In jail, his body demonstrates its
fragility when it is discovered that the pills were simple placebos and that he was never really
impotent. The artificial foundation and skeleton that sustains his erections and status as a
member of hegemonic (transnational business) masculinity calls to mind the problems with
neoliberal economic strategies of growth, as its tenets often only provide an appearance of
progress while the majority wilts away under the duress of poverty and unemployment. His
fall from economic, social and sexual dominance to being a common criminal underscores
the author‟s warning of the times to come where globalized cities and their globalized (black)
markets run the risk of sabotaging intrinsically viable systems of production and rule.
The rise to power of Ferrán, furthermore, inculcates him within Connell‟s
hypothesized position of gender dominance in the 21st century, as he embodies the pillars of
transnational business masculinity in both his appearance and behavior, particularly towards
other gender expressions. With the Pakistani immigrant, Nadira, he plies her with alcohol and
blues music, noting that “el primer paso en corremperla era derribar sus prejuicios contra la
civilización europea” (173). His cultural and corporal colonization of the third world female
is compounded by the joy he feels when sleeping with Mercé, a rich Catalan socialite who
cuckolds her husband for the young, dashing Ferrán. This second relationship inscribes the
economic characteristics of transnational masculinity onto the protagonist when he notes that
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when kissing, her rich husband “estaba metido entre [sus] lenguas, de manera que [él] besaba
también su yate, sus hoteles, su astronómica cuenta bancaria” (171). It is not only the
obsession with wealth that drives Ferrán but also a need to assert himself over other men, as
he “descubri[ó] que buena parte de [su] placer provenía del daño inflingido al esposo
engañado” (171).
It comes through a reading of Ferrán that the writing of transnational business
masculinity and other forms of hegemony in La sangre erguida distinguishes itself from that
posed by Roncagliolo, Rodríguez Matte and others. What we have here is akin to the strategy
followed by Vargas Llosa and Lemebel in the writing of their respective caudillos, as it is
through the artifice of narrative interiority can the patriarch be dethroned from power. By
exposing the libidinal urges and simulated potency of Ferrán, Serna succeeds in doing two
things. On the one hand, he demystifies the hegemonic as a product of placebo pills that only
highlight the lack of strength extant in the position. Secondly, we note that the interiority
created by the narrative, and the reliance on the penis as a point of orientation, juxtaposes
Ferrán to the subordinate (Bulmaro) and marginalized (Juan Luis) masculinities that populate
Serna‟s work.
By creating tangents and points of contact between the distinct masculinities of the
protagonists, the text asserts an underlying essence of maleness that is not rooted in
performativity or social constructionism, but is instead a byproduct of the physical
composition of the subject. The three principal male characters are exaggerated tropes, in the
sense of the virile porn star, business masculinity, and Bulmaro‟s everyday Latin macho, but
they are more alike than what first appears, connected by the “dictadura de testosterona” that
keeps them under a common yoke. We see other signs of comparison, particularly between
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Bulmaro‟s aspirations and Ferrán‟s categorized masculinity. Unsatisfied with the profits he
makes from being a distributor for Deng, the Mexican vies to “independizarse de ese
vampiro,” and to “comer[le] el mandado, no solo en Barcelona, sino también en México,
donde tendría amplias facilidades para extender sus tentáculos” (141). It is not fortuitous that
Bulmaro too assumes transnational hopes of economic growth, cementing the overarching
influence of how and to what extent multinationals have become an important entity in global
and local affairs.
It is telling, then, that the relationship between the three men is centered around
pharmaceutical aids to the common problem of impotence, inscribing onto their bodies the
macro events of economic and political policy. The body becomes an important locator of
their gender norms and roles, as well as the challenges faced by traditional expressions of
masculinity in a globalized city, society and age. Escaping the structuralist categorization of
masculinities that Roncagliolo adheres to and plays off against in Tan cerca de la vida, the
writing of masculinities in La sangre erguida is predicated on the importance of the body in
constructing and identifying gender. By writing, voicing, and usurping the testosterone
caudillo, the author effectively undermines the façade of power associated with the phallus,
creating a textual space where masculinity is problematized, though not necessarily
dethroned as a hegemonic gender expression and identity.
Writing the Male Body and Questioning Masculinity
The narratives examined in these pages connect the dots among several issues that are
becoming central to Latin American fiction, namely the pressures of globalization, questions
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of identity and gender, and philosophies of representation. I am not making the claim that
this is something new, or original in the fiction produced in the past twenty years; issues of
identity are as old as the continent‟s extant civilizations and the influences of global cultures
dates back to pre-national times with the chronicles and early essays on the New World.
What differentiates these contemporary works from their earlier permutations, however, is an
authorial acknowledgement and/or consciousness of the process and problems with
representation that involve as a result a critical evaluation of the issues discussed.
The city that Rodríguez Matte, Roncagliolo, and Serna use as a backdrop to their
stories is an active agent in defining their thought, as it is through its representation and
exposed crevasses that a hermeneutics of identity can take place. What I am trying to say is
that Santiago, Tokyo and Barcelona are not simple scenic details, or textual attempts at
exoticism, but are instead intrinsically glued to the questions of identity, and more
specifically masculinity, that the protagonists and characters negotiate. What further sets
these fictions apart is a concerted effort to put to paper the implications and effects of
transnational business masculinity on local and global gender expressions that are invariably
affected by its homogenous yet hegemonic position. It is not a matter of writing bad guys
versus good guys and having the latter castrate the oppressor, signaling a new lease on life.
Instead, what we see in these fictions is a carefully considered narrativization of the macro
and micro relations between men, penned to create a literary and philosophical challenge to a
current and impending dictator-position that shows no sign of halting as globalization spreads
its tentacles.
Whether it is through a reimagining of the male body and the existential possibility of
resetting current paradigms, or through the futuristic figure of the cyborg, Latin American
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writers are transposing a technological consciousness that is inscribed on their ideological
positions against domineering masculinities. In a sense we are seeing the narratological
expressions of the Latin America of IPods and Macintoshes, though not as commodities that
are signifiers of wealth and social position; this Latin America is a place where the male
body becomes a series of integrated chips, memory modules, and liquid crystal displays,
reappropriating the merchandise of the transnational in an ideological struggle to maintain
sovereignty.
A separate trajectory, however, highlights the physiological anatomy of the male
body, calling to attention the cellular structure of bodies that do not dissipate in the face of
Butlerian theologies of performativity and iteration. The curiosities that define the male body
are not glossed over or relegated to a secondary tableau in favor of the performance,
language, and dress of gender, but are instead present and dissected in the fictions of Enrique
Serna and Ana Clavel, begging the reader to reconsider the social constructivist paradigm
that underscores a substantial sum of the critical work done on masculinity and gender.
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CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION: OF TROPES AND MEN
The figure of the cyborg or cybernetic masculinity as a way of challenging the forces
of a global Masculine calls to attention some of the major points of contention I explicate
throughout these pages. Building on what I noted in the first chapter, where the male body
and its gender expression become key components of texts that mesh the fields of history and
identity, these original ways of seeing and writing the masculine force a rethinking of how
gender is conceived of and utilized in contemporary fiction. The mechanized body, I want to
underline, is not necessarily a questioning or queering of patriarchy, or a move to dethrone
phallic power, but is instead a conscious attempt at empowering and defining masculinities
against the Masculine.
By writing a cyborg male body, which in the case of Santiago Roncagliolo is an antiMasculine masculinity, Tan cerca de la vida perpetuates the trend I note in contemporary
fiction of engineering competing and alternative masculinities within a single text, enticing
the reader to decipher and analyze the writing of gender in a way that decenters the critical
practice of solely focusing on hegemonic masculinity. This is not to say that hegemonic
masculinity in its socioculturally sensitive avatars is not written, as the figure of Kreutz or the
caudillos in the new historical novels are alive and well. What is key, however, in
understanding gender in these fictions, is the textualization of plural masculinities, creating a
market of male commodities, created in part by the commodification of the male body,
reactive to the economic paradigm of end-of-century Latin America.
This market of masculinities is perhaps most evident in Rivera Garza‟s
stereotype/countertype exercise in Nadie me verá llorar, or Franz Galich‟s Y te dire quién
eres (Mariposa traicionera), where competing masculine expressions are written against
each other. This latter text I further find interesting in any study of contemporary masculinity
in Latin America as it includes and cultivates music as a secondary plane of exploring
sexuality and gender. These caveats of popular culture within contemporary texts are more
than a postmodern decentering of narrative, but are instead symptomatic of the limitations of
representation extent in the novel when dealing with gender. If prose cannot fully capture
desire, identity, and pleasure, then lyrical registers seem to be the appropriate and logical step
to take to understand and represent masculinities, particularly in the wake of the domineering
machista Masculine that continues to sputter forward in Latin American societies.
The recourse to music and popular culture, including comic book artifacts and tropes,
is representative of the broadening of critical debates of gender away from rhetorical and
philosophical schools to a cultural studies model that ponders alternative modes of study. The
shift from a center, represented by the novel, towards other areas of popular expression also
highlights the spatial shifts seen in contemporary fictions and societies, as the central
business/administrative district loses its phallic hold over the national imaginary and space is
virtualized. If the traditional textual referent of space is disarticulated, then how can gender
be textually traced? The works of several of the authors studied in these pages point towards
a democratization of space as a tangential process to the (increasing) democratization of
societies as women enjoy more rights and masculinity goes into “crisis.” The stretching of
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borders beyond the national to regional economic groupings or the incursions of
multinationals into larger and smaller urban centers also highlights the challenges faced by
local substrates of gender that must adapt to foreign models and Masculinities. The cyborg
and technical body, as seen in the last chapter, is a textual codification of this process, as
masculinity and gender can no longer be conceived in strictly localized bubbles, just as
commercial systems are no longer immune to economies of scale and scope brought about by
the unstoppable, voracious processes of globalization.
These strategies of writing the male body in tandem with an understanding of the
plurality of gender has further developed into other tropes and approximations that are
reactive to the impact and structures of neoliberal tendencies. Just as the cyborg is reflective
of the role of technology, cyberspace and multinational companies slowly making inroads
into local economies, the figure of the cojo that I mention previously succeeds in
representing a local masculinity hampered and handicapped by changing and foreign powers.
The figure‟s inherent anger and exclusion from heteronormative social circles and family
structures cements its position as an outlier, as a body that somehow does not fit within the
modern Latin American landscape. The cojo in Bayly and Sepúlveda is, importantly, not a
rethinking of the potential power of masculinity, but is instead a reimagining of a local avatar
that struggles with new gender expectations and social demographics. Appropriately, both
writings of this model end in shame and/or death, indicating the eventual impossibility of
reappropriating the antiquated model of the Latin macho.
The idea of writing a handicapped male body that fights the status quo and the new
economic models that shift control from the hands of local Masculinity to a transnational
board of governors is not alone in systematizing a narrative practice of gender cognizant of
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the importance of male corporality. We can note a different textual strategy in the work of
Hernán Rivera Letelier, where the figure of messianic masculinity provides a gendered
structure to the urbanized narratives of the salitreras. This may seem contradictory, as the
vast empty landscapes that shape his novels seems at first glance to be completely anti-urban.
A closer inspection, however, reveals the opposite to be true, as the true centers of his
narrative are the mining towns built as cities, metaphoric of current neoliberal influences in
Santiago. It is in this urban yet non-urban space does Rivera Letelier‟s messianic masculinity
constantly reappear, as a figure that professes hope and salvation through a return to the older
ways before big business decided the fate of millions. Like the figure of the cojo, however,
Rivera Letelier‟s messiahs perish (El fantasista, 2006), are relegated to aimlessly walking the
desert (El arte de la resurrección, 2010), or are revealed to be minions of the earlier
Masculinity of the military and the caudillo (Canción para caminar sobre las aguas, 2004),
highlighting the futility of this approximation.
The textual process of writing a challenge to regimes of power is not complete
without a mention of the roles of revolutions and revolutionaries in contemporary Latin
American society. Going back to the earlier years of Leftist upheavals in Central America, to
modern writings of revolution, the figure of the revolucionario bears mentioning as an axis
around which gender systems can be balanced. In the former example, Gioconda Belli‟s La
mujer habitada is a useful artifact in understanding and characterizing the figure of the
revolutionary who wants to dethrone the caudillo. A contemporary writing of this trope can
be found in Cristina Rivera Garza‟s Nadie me verá llorar and Pedro Lemebel‟s Tengo miedo
torero, where young groups of men organize urban movements that seek to usurp the
Masculine body. In both situations, the figure or trope of revolutionary masculinity is
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characterized by an agile and sensual body, virile and attractive to the female and male gaze,
yet carefully separated from the expectations of caudillo masculinity. They are often poorly
dressed, unwashed, and sweaty, antithetical to the textual Somoza or Pinochet, yet alluringly
sexy in their bad-boy image. The rough but groomed erotic body is combined with a
linguistic inaptitude at the moment of formulating sentences or writing memorandums,
emblematic of the control held over language, politics, and history by the homosocial
Masculine. As challengers to this order, their language demonstrates a refusal to adhere to
spelling and grammatical norms, planting a challenge to the powers that be in both the form
and content of their manifestos. The trope of revolutionary masculinity is, however, only
revolutionary in the political sense, in its stated desire to dethrone the government or the
autocrat, and is in no shape or form indicative of a revolution of gender norms, as these
movements succeed in perpetuating the evils of homophobia and sexism. The female
protagonist in Belli‟s novel, for example, is made to perform domestic duties and is initially
regarded as a mere housemaid to the revolutionary fighters.
The picture, however, is not as bleak as it may seem from the cursory study of these
other masculinities, as there are some tropes that hold their own against local and foreign
hegemonic groups. The first figure worth mentioning is that of the journalist, the pen-in-hand
urban chronicler who uncovers the involvement of Masculinity in organized crime rings. The
protagonist and his mentors in Alberto Fuguet‟s Tinta roja serve as a good representation of
the detective that relies on words and representation to unmask the striations of power that
suffocate democracy. The writer turned detective in Enrique Serna‟s El miedo a los animales
(1995) also fits this concept. Aesthetically disheveled but intellectually strong and
inquisitive, this mode of masculinity relies on the rewriting of history and other official
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discourses as a challenge to the powers of the hegemonic. The journalist or writer, armed
with the decentering power of words and fiction is able to counteract master narratives and
decrees, exposing Masculinity for what it is and positing several exit strategies away from
patriarchal control. It is through the linguistic and mediatic field does journalistic masculinity
pose a threat to order, suggesting that the work and narratives produced by contemporary
writers is a viable strategy to combat globalization and the subjugation of the local to the
transnational.
A further field of inquiry lies in the study of regional representations of masculinities.
Though the fictions produced in Latin America in recent years have more in common than
not, the existence of local issues and paradigms cannot be ignored, no matter how much
marketing editorials like Alfaguara undertake. Though the entire continent has been steeped
in the common juices of neoliberalism and the subsequent corruption of governments and
democracies, there are some very local conditions that do not go unperceived. The example
of Central America is particularly poignant, as unlike other areas, the region has been under
the auspices, tutelage and military involvement of the United States. In the wake of failed
revolutions and the divorce from gringo protection, the masculinities in narratives by Franz
Galich and Maurice Echeverría are strikingly similar in their imagining of a hell-on-earth
scenario where Masculinity is no longer a tangible social referent and is instead substituted
by animalistic, sociopathic, and delusional avatars that perambulate the stricken cities of
Nicaragua and Guatemala with no hope in sight. Though reflective of the broader trends of
materialized and marketable masculinities that I site as being intrinsic to an understanding of
gender in contemporary fiction, these writers posit a masculinity that holds no aspirations of
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power or structure, paving the way for an interpretation of their societies left directionless as
we continue through the 21st century.
Further regional inquiries may settle in Mexico, given its proximity to the United
States and the osmotic effect of sexual politics that can be seen in Luis Zapata‟s El vampiro
de la colonia Roma. A cognitive exploration of sexuality in relation to identity is undertaken
in a multitude of contemporary works where a reconciliation between northern and local
models of gender are played out; one only has to flip through any of Ana Clavel‟s or Pedro
Lemebel‟s novels to understand how important US gender theory is in their writing of
masculinity and femininity. Similarly, a poetics of assimilation occurs in Puerto Rican
narrative, as seen in the works of Mayra Santos-Febres, opening up a field of study that
focuses solely on the existence and writing of masculinities on and about the island, as so
many Puerto Rican writers today write from the United States. These approximations differ
from current approaches to masculinity in these regions which have heavily relied on the
system of Masculinity/Other that I argue against in the introduction.
While looking at regional or national expressions of gender, we cannot ignore the
case of Argentina, the birthplace of canonical gender studies narratives such as Manuel
Puig‟s El beso de la mujer araña (1976), which holds its own clues to the study of
revolutionary masculinity. Akin to Chile in its experience of dictatorships and desaparecidos,
texts such as Mariano Dupont‟s Aún (2003) presents an alternative reading of post-war male
bodies that must deal with the aftershocks and shrapnel left behind by socially suffocating
regimes. Written from a hospital bed, Dupont‟s protagonist recounts the fear and oppression
engendered by judicial Masculinity and showcases, by means of a repetitive rewriting
compulsion, the power of journalistic/literary masculinity to reshape official discourses.
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It bears halting at this moment to mention the importance of free-market, and at times
virtual economics in the carving out of textual masculinities in contemporary fiction, as the
process of writing the male body is evocative of the economic changes brought about by
globalization and free trade. The last text I examine in the final chapter, Enrique Serna‟s La
sangre erguida, evidences the influence of global pharmaceutical companies and the
competing made-in-China industries that engage in a borderless battle to ensure economic
hegemony. The inclusion of Viagra as a direct interjector within questions of male impotence
is not fortuitous, but an indicator of the importance of world markets in male sexuality. This
is to note as Serna‟s novel is not the first Mexican text to openly discuss, critique, and
problematize male impotence. Writing in 1992, Luis Arturo Ramos‟s La casa del ahorcado
focuses on the mid-life crisis of a high-ranking government worker, Enrique Montalvo, who
begins to question his marriage, sexuality, and professional ethics, just as his penis begins to
disobey him.
Unlike Serna‟s protagonists, however, Montalvo‟s inability to sustain an erection is
not blamed on the testosterone dictatorship of a little caudillo, but on the shriveled appendage
that is compared to Lazarus from the Bible. The penis as caudillo in Serna is perhaps
reflective of the popularity of the new historical/dictator novel in Latin America, which only
begins to surge following La casa del ahorcado. What could potentially have been
innovative in the novel is left unrealized as the development of the protagonist‟s impotence
and its questioning within male sexuality and masculinity is obscured by a Nazi detective
story and Montalvo‟s unhappiness with his son-in-law, leaving the reader unfulfilled and
gasping for more, just like the women who share Montalvo‟s bed. Sensual metaphors aside,
the text leaves untouched the topic of impotence, as the protagonist is magically cured by
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agreeing to have an affair with a secretary and flee the strangling confines of an upper middle
class life.
Unlike its successor, La casa del ahorcado writes the penis as a hapless subject to the
male body, controlled by mysterious forces that are teased to the surface yet never fully
uncovered. The tedious and difficult task of getting a raise out of the issue is, however,
realized in Serna‟s thesis on masculinity, as the penis gains subjectivity by being
characterized as a dictator, so much so that the suffering male becomes an object to the
dictatorship, his survival connected to an usurpation of the caudillo, evocative of a multitude
of social changes in 20th-century Latin America. This challenge of the corporal appendage
turned subject, however, is only made possible by the drug Viagra, indicating that
globalization and capitalism are intimately connected to the masculine condition of the 21st
century.
What does bear mentioning in Ramos‟s text, however, is the textual use of the anus as
a site of political abjection. The protagonist describes in vivid detail how he accidentally
spies the conception of his grandchildren as he observes his daughter and her boyfriend
copulating on the family‟s living room furniture. Shrouded in darkness and crouching in a
nook in the stairwell, Montalvo is greeted by his future son-in-law‟s gaping anus as his
daughter separates his cheeks in a moment of pleasure. The cyclopean greeting is branded in
the protagonist‟s memory, and seems to demarcate the son-in-law‟s position within the
family, as he promptly leaves the daughter for the United States to study law, only to return
and seek a separation, underlining Ramos‟s political dissatisfaction with American influence
in the politics of the federal district. The anus is furthermore implicated in Montalvo‟s
reception of its offspring, as the two twins are given Russian names by their mother, as a
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final dedication to the now-defunct second world. Like their defecting father, the twins and
the economic model they represent are held in disdain by the protagonist as an unviable
solution for the stagnancy of Mexico.
Like the anus in Lemebel and Ramírez (Margarita, está linda la mar), Ramos decides
to test its sphincter in La casa del ahorcado when the protagonist begins to suffer from
painful hemorrhoids, just as he begins to get involved with his colleagues in the black market
business of selling used medicine bottles to pharmaceutical companies, and as he gains
membership to an all-male support group named Adulterers Anonymous. Both activities
signal his fall into the webs of corruption and moral infamy that Ramos writes against at the
beginning of the novel, indicating that the narrative voice of Montalvo is also part of the
problem. The inflamed and bleeding vascular structures that line his anal canal are a textual
cue for his fall from grace, akin to Lemebel‟s Pinochet soiling himself through the authorial
inversion of penetration, cementing the role of the anus as a discursive corporeal site.
Keeping these textual strategies of writing the male body and masculinities in
contemporary Latin American fiction must be approached through a hermeneutics of gender
that is open to going beyond the binary of Masculinity/Other. The time is ripe for criticism to
approach texts from a masculinity studies perspective, keeping in mind how the Masculine is
constructed, and deconstructed by and into masculinities, femininities, and Queerities. There
needs to be a shift from the approaches undertaken to date, where masculinity is stereotyped
as Masculinity, and the critical onus is placed on the Other. As these pages have studied and
attempted, I argue that an approximation to current Latin American genders must be aware of
the break between the hegemonic and its pluralities. That being said, a critical understanding
of femininity today must be aware of the plethora of masculinities that are written and lived
297
as demographics and populations change under the pressures of neoliberalism. Similarly, an
analysis of Queer identities requires a knowledge of how the Masculine has evolved and to
what extent other masculinities now operate as individual and autonomous subjects.
And yet, these pages do not put forth a practice of gender that is centered solely on
masculinity, and in no way advocate a colonizing of feminist and Queer schools of thought.
There is no implicit message to forget about or nullify female and homosexual gender
expressions and studies, and there is no questioning of the existence of patriarchal systems
that continue to oppress gender minorities. What I am suggesting is an understanding within
these other paradigms of the non-universality of Masculinity, which is to say a consciousness
of the non-adherence of all male bodies to its tenets. Such a basis for criticism would open
the doors for an evaluation of gender in contemporary fiction that goes beyond the
traditional, dare I say, closed-spaces of feminist and Queer studies.
How would this work? In the study of Rivera Garza‟s texts, for example, the action of
gender transgression would not solely focus on Matilda Burgos, but would also take into
consideration the many male subjects that effectively bend gender and Masculinity. Instead
of repeating and regurgitating the motif of the transgressive female, a holistic approach to the
novel would underline all transgressive bodies, thereby setting up an understanding of how
all gender norms can be surpassed and blurred, first by establishing how and to what effect
these norms are created within the text. A similar shift can occur in the reception of
narratives by Mayra Montero, Mayra Santos-Febres and Enrique Serna studied in these
pages, as criticism can be conscious of how it at times quickly and sometimes haphazardly
labels diegetic characters with North American categories of identity that are not always
analogous to the narrated worlds.
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These literary representations of particular types of masculinity are useful in
establishing a practice of gender that seeks to decipher the structures of power within defined
social systems, and are not explicit references to actual groups of men. Revolutionary,
cyborg, and the other masculinities mentioned above are textualities, or textual codes and
systems for approaching and (de)constructing gender norms, with the purpose of elucidating
a critical study of Masculinity, as they are written vis-à-vis the hegemonic variant no matter
the sociocultural context. It is through this critical approach that gender studies, and not only
masculinity studies, can move forward and provide a fresh take on gender and sexuality in
Latin American fiction.
299
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